Off the Road Again

In its first 3 years, the Rally Foundation has awarded $1 million in 39 research grants for childhood cancer research at 22 institutions across the country! We have partnered with several other childhood cancer non-profits in order to co-fund promising research, and one of these partners is the Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation. Rally and Alex's recently awarded a research grant to Dr. Miles at Children's National Medical Center in Washington DC, and the Rally Across America team had the opportunity to participate in a check presentation on Friday morning.


Here is the Rally Across America team presenting the check to Dr. Miles with Jay Scott, Alex's dad, from the Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation. Luckily, Jay brought the check with him because as you can see, we did not have any room in our car! (This was taken after we had gotten rid of a few things!)


We had a wonderful time talking to Dr. Miles and her colleagues, Dr. Newman and Dr. Sandler, over breakfast and were excited to learn more about their exciting research! Dr. Newman, a fellow cyclist, loaned us his DC area cycling route guide (circa 1980s), and he promised that he and Dr. Sandler would cycle with the RAA team next year! Dr. Sandler is not yet a cyclist, but that has never stopped anyone from joining Rally Across America!

We left goody bags for the kids being treated for cancer at DC Children's, and then we went to Georgetown University Hospital for our last hospital visit. The kids there loved the goody bags just as much as the kids at the other 5 hospitals that the team visited this year, and we look forward to visiting kids again next year!

Friday afternoon we loaded everyone and everything back into the car to drive to the last destination of our trip. The 5 hour drive from DC to Greensboro, NC actually took 7 1/2 hours due to rain and traffic, but the important thing is that we finally made it!


This morning we enjoyed a wonderful breakfast thanks to Claire's aunt and uncle, and then got back into the car one last time. We arrived back in Atlanta this afternoon very thankful for how well the trip went, how many new friends we made, and how much money we raised for childhood cancer research! Amazingly, we had no flat tires, no car trouble, no injuries, and we made it to all of our hospital visits and events on time! Actually, Jai had car trouble when we got back to Atlanta and found out his car battery was dead, but it was an easy fix and we weren't supposed to be back in Atlanta until tomorrow anyway.

Thank you for all of your support this year! Don't forget to check back for the "out takes" blog post...coming soon...and don't forget to order t-shirts from Claire@rallyfoundation.org!

Rally On!
Claire, Magan, Michael, and Jai