Minimum Surpassed!

This is amazing news! So i have fundraised over $2200 so far (and still have over a month of fundraising to go!) So what this means is for every $100 over that minimum i will take 20 bucks out of my pocket (where there are endless numbers of 20 dollar bills...) and donate it to the AIDS Committee of Guelph and Wellington County. To see the amazing things they do in my home community click here.

Thank you all for your support and encouragement. and wear your helmets!

Going nowhere fast: Why i love fundraising on my trainer

Yep, I hear that line alot. It gets old pretty quick, like after once. But i'll hear that line over and over again and keep smiling because i love fundraising on my bike trainer. If you don't know what that is, i basically set up my bike on a stand that puts the back wheel off the ground so i can pedal and "go nowhere fast", i put a little sign on my bike that says "please donate," attach a little bucket to the front of my handlebars, hop on my bike and pedal away.  I've done alot of my fundraising this year like this, and raised over 1000 dollars. I really love it and this is blog about why.

So this morning i set up at 7am at the Guelph farmers Market, a place i visit each week. I'm an early market goer because the crowds overwhelm me, most days. So i go early, get my veggies and go home to my cats. Not that i don't love the market. I do, very much in fact. I just get people overload very quickly there. I do enjoy seeing people i know, and saying hi to the vendors, but i am quite shy by nature, and so home to my cats i go. But here i am once again set up on my trainer, having all kinds of strangers/partial strangers and freinds come up and talk to me. for hours I allow that little bit of extrovert in me shine. I talk to strangers. It feels good. I find it incredibally inpriring when i'm there cycling away looking at the birds flying overhead (chimney swifts this morning), and someone walks by, i say "good morning" they slow down, i tell them what i'm doing and who the money goes towards, and they pull out their wallet and drop in a few coins. They have no idea who i am. they probably don't know anyone with HIV/AIDS but they still open thier wallets and wish me a good ride. I had a few very moving moments this morning. A woman walked by me on her way into the market. I said "good morning," she ignored me. Fine. She came back out and we made eye contact. She walked over and dropped a twoonie in my bucket. I said thank you and she walked off. A few hours later, she comes by again and pulls out a twenty and puts it in my bucket and says "Thank you for doing this." Good lord i teared up. that's what gets me. these small interactions with strangers that mean so much. Or when i told a woman and hers kids what i was riding for she came by later got her kids to put a few coins in my bucket and thanked me for getting a disscussion going with her kids about what AIDS was. Amazing. Me riding my bike in a public place is getting people talking with thier kids about AIDS.

I also really love doing the trainer fundraising as it really reminds me how small actions can really add up to something amazing. a few quarters and loonies for you, added to everyone elses quarters and loonies can make a huge difference. Like how me spining my little legs along with all the other riders spinning thier little legs on our way to montreal can help raise over a million dollars  (random tidbit: over %40 of PWAs operating budget comes from this rally) for such an amazing organization and how all the seemingly small things, like a fresh cooked meal, or a much needed medication, that PWA does makes such a huge difference in the lives of people living with HIV/AIDS.

So thank you all, thank you for all the little things you do in your life. they do add up and can make a huge impact.

Tri-Pride event coming up!

So tonight i'm getting all my stuff in order for Tri-Pride this weekend. Shining up my bicycle, making sure my trainer still functions (i did after all find abaondoned in the basement of the farmhouse, and that is THE creepiest basement i have ever ventured into, but i digress..) getting all my posters and jars and all ready to set up at tripride and cycle my little buns off hoping to get people to drop a little spare change in my jar.

How did i get so lucky as to get a table at Tri-Pride you ask. Well it actually started at Guelph Pride Dance, one of the organizers of tri-pride came over to me and we gots ta chatting and he wanted to help me raise some more money. so this lovely man has been getting me contacts at tri-pride and put my name in for a complementary community table. SOLA (the southern ontario leather assosiation) bought a few community tables that they then donated to causes/groups who might not otherwise be able to afford to table there. So this lovely man at tri-pride got me a free table to fundraise from.

You see this is another reason i do this ride. it contstantly reminds me of the amazingly good nature of people. people I don't even know wish me good luck and empty their pockets into my donation bucket. people i barely know go out of their way to help me raise doantions. makes me think back to the ride last year, where along the route, there would be people, just random people on the street, stopped to watch all the bikes go by, and they clap, they clap and cheer for all of us riding our way to montreal. they have no idea who we are or what we're doing, but still they clap, they smile as we ride by, they feel the strength and the love that is embodied in this ride. this is why i ride.  your support, and the support of people i don't even know keeps my legs spinning, long after i've compleatly lost feeling in them.

so if you're out and about kitchener city hall on saturday. have look for me on my trainer. come say hi and bring me water and carbs. also as a side note the rainbow chorus will be singing on the mainstage! come sing along!

lots of love to you all.
jaye

oh May. where did you go?

so may kicked my butt. i havn't been on a training ride since my last post. i feel crummy about it. i really like my bike. and need to mke time to do those longer rides. i'm up over 50 kms now and it takes a chunk of time to complete that. and even more time to eat enough so i don't pass out while riding.  but i have been doing what i like to call sprint training. on my way to or from (or both) from work. i basicly bike as hard and as fast as i can for the majority of the ride. this isn't really a poor excuse for not doing  long distance. apartently some of the best long distance runners in the world train by doing sprints as the main part of their training program. so maybe it'll work for me? who knows. seems to be doing alright so far. i need to tackle the 50km boundery this week. should be alright just finding the time, and energy (farming=lots of energy) to do it... arg.

may did have some amazing moments. i set up on my bike trainer at the opening dance to Guelph Pride. The amamzing folks there to dance and have a good time dropped a cool $249.50 into my donation bucket. Amazing. totally amazing. rode for about 4 hours straight (ha! straight at a gay dance ha!) it was great. awesome people.

well i gunna sign off and go dream about riding my bike. i'll be over 50 soon. promise.

BAM 45km!

Just got home from a beautiful 45 km ride, now i'm sipping my yummy chocolate peanut butter protien drink. yum!
so yes beautiful day, great for a ride. i started out heading towards my friends place who lives out in the countryside west of guelph to drop something off fo them. gets good and hilly out those parts. i tried out a few new roads today. as a point dirt roads and paved roads look a whole latta the same in google maps. so ya. i hit a dirst road. but it actually wasn't that bad some of the roads in guelph have bigger bike eating pot holes. and plus dirt roads and bumpy roads are good for building up the butt callus. yes that's what i said. butt callus. there are points on your (and my) prosterior that are in regular contact with the seat. if you just start out biking. those points will be quite sore indeed. after a little while you develop "butt callus" your tooshie gets tougher and more able to handle the rigours of the road. butt callus, use it in a sentance today and get 5 points.

but back to the ride. so it took me 2.5 hours. no shabby. and thats with snack breaks and shaking fists at drivers breaks and pee breaks. oh pee breaks! i used my sneekee outside for the first time at the side of the road. how fricken awesome was it you ask? well it was pretty fricken awesome. important thing to take into account - which way is the wind blowing. yep i'll get better at that one.
and! i'm recovering from a cold so my nose was running like crazy, and i forgot my hankie at home. i can only sniff fos much before i start to go cross eyed (not good on a bike), so i did it. i did something that usually totally grosses me out. i shotguned. for those of you that live wonderfully sheltered lives shotguning involves covering one nostral (on your nose), and blowing like the dickens, shooting the snot out of your nasal cavities and onto the ground. charming isn't it. so i was desperate. so i did it and needless to say i need more practice and again the wind was my enemy. ew.

i took a new route from niska to laird, i cut though a subdivision. it was super nice riding. roads were quiet and really wide, no bike lanes but it didn't matter. man i wish all the roads were like that. then out to arkell i went and headed down watson to stone. now i didn't think it would be possible to have a section of road worse than victoria near york. but watson has taken the cake. yay for butt callus building. and again my beefs with random bike lanes that start and stop without reason and generally make no sense. on stone from watson to victoria there is an awesome bike lane. then as soon as you get into town (where there are more cars and the roads are narrower) the bike lane disapears. instead you get a nice soft dirt shoulder as wide as a lane of traffic. really how hard would it have been to continure that sucker into town. arg.

alright that's my rant for today. let's celebrate something. like fundraising awesomeness! you've all helped my raise $930.15, this is so incredable! and the peezees are going fast. act now for your first choice in colours. for more details click here for the facebook event.

have an amazing evening folks. wear your fricken helmet!

i love bears

it's true. i really love bears. last night i went to the tri-city bear meat at sizzle in cambridge, set up on my little bike trainer and donation box, hoping to get a few donations towards the rally. and boy are those folks awesome, all night long folks would stop by and chat to me and drop some change into my donation box. (sizzle is an awesome dance space btw) i started biking at 8pmish and kept peddling through to 130am (with a few pee breaks). what at awesome night, great crowd, sexy folks, great music, bears, did i mention i love bears. i must say the one liners you hear when ridieng a bike trainer for hours and hours at a gay bar are very different then the ones i get at the farmers market, a little more x rated and awesome. bit of a step up from the "well you're going nowhere fast" of the market. haha. not to mention i've never had my ass grabbed at the farmers market....

going to events like this are just one of the ways that being a part of the ride is helping me expand my comfort zones and learn more about myself. by nature i'm a shy wee person, i don't really like new situations, being by myself in new sitiatons, going places by myself where i won't know anyone. but every time i do it, everytime i do something i've nevere done before, go a pace new by myeslf,  i realise it usually will work out fine, and can acutlly be really fun. not the aniety inducing event that i make it out to bei in my brain. oh brain you do exagerate soemtimes. there there it's ok. i can be fun, outgoing and sociable, even it situations where my brain tells me i souldn't do it cause i'm a shy wee person. don't get me wrong my stomache was in knots on the drive over there, but ya everytime i go someplace new, i grow a little. expand my ideas of myself and what i can accomplish and retrain my brain to think i'm capable of more than i think i can do. hey i can ride a bike for 5.5 hours, not feel super aweful the next day my body amazes me sometimes. 

oh and all those amazing folks dropping their pocket change into my donation box donated 237.15. see when everyone gives a little it can turn into something amazing.

thank you all again for your support you keep my legs spinning and my wheels a'turning.

first training ride done!

so after work today i decided to go for a wee ride. i thought 40km would be a good starting point. and i had already mapped out a decent looking 38km ride last week.
i must say what a beautiful evening for a ride. i got started around 630pm and as i made my way out to the feilds and farmland that surround guelph the light was just incredible. all gold and warm feeling, which was good casue i was in my bike shorts. i did think to put on mitts though that was a smart move. so this was a new route. i thought i had it easy and could use all my routes from last year, but then i remembered that i moved. so the kms are off. arg. but that's ok new routes are fun. this one was quite hilly, for the first half. ah guelph -latin for giant f'n hills all over the place. many a time i remembered that "oh shit" feeling i get when i look up to see a nice long steady incline. but hills did end up being my forte in the actual rally last year. i have yet ot find a route with less than 3 intense hills. and silly me each time i hit them i try to do them faster. but the ride went well. i got home just as the sun was going down. very pretty.
one thing i ddin't have was my trusty waterbottle backpack thing. it was packed away and i have no idea where it is. i must find it. i really hope it's not in one of the "random" boxes of stuff that was packed at the end and is just a mishmash of lots of stuff. i'd really like to find it before saturday. casue this saturday as you can remember i'm heading to the Bear Meat at sizzle, with my bike and trainer to try to drum up some donations. i'm sure it'll be a great time. well shoot i'm knackered. hense why this blog is slightly train-of-thought-disjointed-like so i'm off to bed.