Rally Across America: Whirlwind of a Day

Our itinerary today had 5 stops!

First Stop: Vineyard Vines. This morning we visited the headquarters of one of our wonderful sponsors, Vineyard Vines, in Stamford, CT. We were excited to tell them about our ride over breakfast, and we had a whale-y good time! We are so thankful for all of their support and look forward to doing a ride with them on Martha's Vineyard next summer. Then it was back to New York City - by car, since the team biked from NYC to Stamford the day before - for 2 hospital visits and a tour of a lab.

Second Stop: Visit the kids at Columbia University Medical Center. After successfully navigating the streets of NYC, we made it to Columbia to visit the kids at the oncology clinic. We were able to give out 55 goody bags to the kids there. They were all excited to hear about the Rally Foundation and see all the fun things from our sponsors, like Vineyard Vines hats and Aflac ducks.

Third Stop: Irving Cancer Research Center at Columbia University. I'm pretty sure that no one has ever taken a bicycle into the childhood cancer research lab at Columbia, and it's probably against some OSHA guideline, but we definitely did it any way. We met with Dr. Adolfo Ferrando, a Rally Research Grant recipient, who is researching leukemia. He gave us a great tour of the lab and explained all about his research.

Fourth Stop: Visit the kids at NYU Medical Center. By the time we made it to the pediatric oncology clinic at NYU, it was getting pretty late in the day and there weren't too many people there, but we were able to hand out some goody bags, and I'm sure that the kids tomorrow will be very excited to get the goody bags too! Then it was time to load the bike back up and get everyone back in the car (for the 4th time today!) and drive to Staten Island. We left at the start of rush hour, just as it was starting to rain,but that just meant that we got to enjoy some more people watching before we left NYC!

Fifth Stop: Maddon family in Staten Island. The 2006 RAA team stayed with Rally Kid Zachary's family 3 years ago soon after he was diagnosed with leukemia. Now, Zachary has finished chemo and is doing great! We have had a great evening of eating and playing with the Maddon family and will be sad to leave them in the morning!