New York: Two busy days

We've had a busy couple of days. Yesterday we started out by riding to Vineyard Vines from the Cos Cob Inn. When we got there, we got to meet a whole bunch of new people. Shep and Ian even called a storewide meeting so that we could give a little speech. I think it went pretty well. Dean had flown up, so she was able to tell a little bit more of Rally's story. We had Austin sing the whale song - with a guitar, which was a first, but it went pretty well - and a lot of people joined in the second time around. The staff there was great. There was this huge jar of change, dwarfing Chester's bag even, sitting on a stool in the room, and people kept on adding to it while we were there. What's more, Shep and Ian said that we shouldn't be pedaling for pennies; we should be pedaling for dollars, and they gave us a big check. Our Vineyard Vines visit turned out to be a lot of fun. We owe a big thanks to Joan for helping organize all our VV events.

Next, we rode from Vineyard Vines to the Outback Steakhouse in White Plains. One of the VV sales guys, Ross, volunteered to ride with us. We had some good hills, but we were rolling along at a decent pace - until suddenly, Ross's chain broke. It was a completely freak occurence, but we had a little time, so we decided to try to fix it. We had never had to fix a chain before, but we pulled out our chain-breaking tool, removed a link, and with only a little bit of trouble, put it back together. We decided Ross should stay in a low front gear, and he'll probably still need to have a bike shop take a look at it, but the fix worked. We even got some speed up after that - Austin hit 41.5, and I hit 43.1 - which is better than we've done since training. We have now fixed just about everything on a bike. We made it to Outback, where Dean, Ross and some other VV people helped do a little bit of setup.

At the Outback, we had three Rally kids: Kimberly, Danielle, and Spadicia. The kids were great. Kimberly and her twin Karen told us all about their dogs, including the two they should be getting in two days to celebrate the impending end of Kimberly's treatment. A lot of Vineyard Vines people were able to make it and rally around these kids with us, which made me and Austin feel great. We met one girl, Katie, who has been free of her cancer - osteogenic sarcoma, the same type that Spadicia had - for the past four years, and is about to go to college. This Outback event went very well, and the staff there really helped us make it great.

After Outback, we went to Maria Ferrari Children's Hospital to see some more kids. Spadicia had been treated there, and she told us to look out for one friend of hers, Madika. We did get to meet Madika, a Knicks fan who hopes to play basketball when she gets out, and we met Miles, who had just had a party celebrating his breakout from isolation. One boy, Sai, had a lot of fun riding around on one of the bikes. He rode to meet us on his tricycle, and our bike was a little big for him, but we were able to hold him up. Eventually, we had to go, but we had a great time. After one more quick stop, we went out to grab some dinner at Alive at Five, generously provided for by one of the VV girls, Erica, and then we came back to our hosts' home, the parents of another VV girl, Suzanne, to pass out.

We got to sleep in a little later today. We headed over to Richard's, a local VV retailer, at about 10, where we met Elizabeth, Taylor, and Lindsay. Richard's was a pretty cool place - pretty big, and it had a little stand for us. The new VV ties were put on display, and we talked to some people who gave us some donations. Right after that, we walked up the avenue, handing out whale hats and water bottles while asking random passersby for donations. We met some firemen raising money for Jerry's Fund, and we agreed that between our two groups, we'd try to get everyone's money. We were able to make a couple hundred bucks there - which proves, I think, that generosity is still fairly prevalent in the north.

After that, we went around to run a few errands - deposit our donations, mail a few things, and get Austin a new phone charger. The bank and the post office were easy to find, and other than having a little trouble trying to find a place selling the right phone charger, the afternoon went pretty quickly. We made it back to Suzanne's parents, who told us we could stay another night and ordered us some pizza. After another long day, we should have a little time off to do some sightseeing.

~ Tom