We Just Rocked Laval

from Aug 28…

I just rode with the tandem and we took the team out of Montreal the hard way…with a big fat detour u-turn that by no means suggests we got lost.  Seriously.

Riding in the pace van now with Carey and Kara in front of the tandem.  It’s 6:06 PM and I’m not sure when I will get internet, but I wanted to capture some of what we got to experience again.

Megan picked us up at 8AM…which is waaaaay too early if you stay up until 3AM looking for a place to find crepes.  Yeah, uh…totally Kara’s fault.

Team Food (that’s us) made our way down to Loblaws and grabbed a bunch of grub.  Man, the looks on their faces when we bought six bags of apples and a billion bananas.

We met up with the convoy, got the bikes tuned up and then hit the road with the team to make our way to Roche’s head office and were promptly blown off our seats.

5 year old Sammy and 8 year old Liam totally funked out a solid 5kms and as the dozen or so of us on bikes rolled into Accu-Chek HQ, we were met by 150+ volunteers, Roche staff, JDRF Quebec representatives, stilt-walking clowns and families living with Type 1 Diabetes.  They were cheering us through to this awesome event they were hosting for us, complete with buffet, drinks, some brief talks from JDRF, Cyclebetes, Roche and a truly endearing family.

Nathalie and her daughter drew more than a few tears as they shared how T1 affected their lives.  Both mom and daughter were phenomenal and drew much applause.

Next up was our very own Nathalie and her son Liam, who are team members of Cyclebetes.  Nathalie grabbed that mic and rocked it for 8 minutes and brought a great personal touch from our team to the event.

I then broke my legs in with a great shift behind the tandem and got to spend some time riding with Canadian Olympic medallist Chris Jarvis!  Sooooo cooool!

I have about an hour before I get on the tandem for the first shift and I’ll be knocking off some big KMs with Kim Hexter.  I am so pumped.

I’m thinking huge about my wife, my two man cubs and really wishing they could be here.  I can’t wait to see you guys in 7 sleeps!