It’s late and I’m so tired, and tomorrow morning we leave on the Rally and even though I’ve been in bed early for months now, suddenly tonight when it would really help to get a big sleep, I’m not tired at all. What I am is anxious. Super anxious. I’m still going to make this short I think because I think the best thing I can do is lie in bed and try to sleep.

The day before the Rally is “Packing Day”. You gather up everything you need for the six days of the Rally (including a tent and a sleeping bag and a chair and a plate and your knitting and clothes) and you take it down to the appointed packing place, and you get two bins, and you put all the worldly goods you will possess for the next week into them, and then you put them on a truck, and then they close the truck. Tomorrow, while all the cyclists make their way to the end of “Day One” the trucks will drive our stuff to that stopping place, and that’s where you’re reunited. It’s a weird day – so many things I always have with me (my bag, my favourite shoes, my sock knitting, my real toothbrush) are all on the truck, and it feels weird to not have them. It’s a ton of pressure too, All I will have for the next week is in those two bins and the only things I can bring tomorrow are what will fit in my pockets.

Still, Team Knit showed up and we put our stuff in the bins and we all took deep breaths and we tried not to think about the challenge ahead. In one way it’s so good to be together and see each other and have things be “normal”, and in the other, nothing is normal, we’re all under some sort of strain and not a single one of us feels ready, or confident, or prepared for this challenge. Today as I put my stuff in my bins and looked around me at what we’re about to undertake I’ve never felt less ready. As a group, we are undertrained, underprepared, and more than a little freaked out. This Rally feels less like the before-times than we were hoping so far, but it does feel like hope.

I don’t know what else to tell you about what it feels like to be on the cusp of this thing again after so long a break. I can tell you that I am definitely afraid. We’re about to do something really, really hard, and I am absolutely scared – but I tell you something that I realized tonight in conversation with a dear friend – it also feels pretty amazing.

I have – like almost all of us, spent the last few years watching terrible things happen to people and feeling impotent to change anything, to make anything better, to make tragedy stop unfolding, to staunch to hard times for fellow humans, but the Rally changes that and fundraising for this ride has been a wonderful outlet and relief.

The funds raised by this ride go to making a direct and fundamental changes in the lives of people with AIDS. It is help for mothers, food for children, rides to the doctor, someone who cares if they are lonely, support, love, care, haircuts, pet food, hospital visits, childcare… Every dollar you donate makes a real, tangible and important change in the life of another human, and that… Well I guess that I can get on a bike for that.

Team Knit is off – and we are so grateful for every donation, every dollar that you send to support our ride. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, us riding to Montreal makes no change in the world. It is your donations that give meaning to what we do. I’m going to slide our links in here again because we’re not quite at our goals –

Me

Ken

Cameron

Pato

And I want you to know that if you’re able to donate or help in any way – passing this post on to another person, helping spread the word on social media, talking about PWA to anyone, that this action, this thing makes you so important. It means that you as a person chose to change the life of another person, and in a time when we all have so little control, doesn’t that feel amazing?

Thank you. We think you’re important.

PS: I have never figured out how to blog from afar- the best place to follow the ride this week is on Instagram.

PPS: I didn’t even finish the poncho can you believe it.

I don’t know how you handle it, but when I feel things start to speed up I like to sit down with a cup of coffee, make some lists and try to pull things together in a concrete way. That’s what I’m doing this morning as the reality of what I’m doing this week sinks in. Today I have Elliot, the house, laundry and Patreon prep to manage, tomorrow I have to pack, pick up my bike from the shop and film, and Saturday I have to drop off all my stuff for the Rally at packing day and edit the video from the day before, and Sunday we leave. That means I have FOUR DAYS and every time I think about it I get a slightly hysterical feeling in my stomach that I am fixing the way I always have, and that is with yarn. Sure, you might think that packing and organizing and actually doing some of the things on my list would help, but I am taking the edge off of this thing by ignoring it all and knitting on a hemp poncho.

I know, that’s an unlikely sentence but it’s working for me. Every time I think about how much needs doing between now and Sunday, I just knit another repeat. (Pattern is River Ripples, and the yarn is Tokeland Hemp – Rain Shadow Farm. I got mine from The Artful Ewe.) I remember seeing this pattern knit in that yarn as a sample and really loving how it looked – part of that whole “post apocalyptic my clothes are all rags but I look fabulous anyway matrix-ish” vibe that I always aspire to but somehow always ends up making me look rather scruffy instead of chic. I keep trying though and this week I’m plowing away on it like it will be the perfect thing to wear on a week long charity ride. Should I be out riding hill repeats? Yes. (Actually I did that yesterday.) Should I be finding and packing my camping stuff? Absolutely. Should I be organizing the family for my absence? That would be best, yes. Should I be working so that I can ride for a week without the pressure and guilt of abandoning the only thing paying the bills? If I was clever, yes. Should I be doing something about the way the whole house is slightly sticky?

NO SORRY I URGENTLY NEED A HEMP PONCHO.

The poncho is here pictured yesterday at the park, where Ellie and I have been hanging at the wading pool. Today is predicted to be ridiculously hot so after talking it through, we’re going back to the “big pool”. We have decided to return despite injustices perpetrated upon Elliot’s person last week when it turned out that you have to be six years old to go on the water slide, not five- and when we were told that I have to be an arms length away from him until he reaches that magic age as well. Elliot feels (and I think the kid has a point) that pool independence should be based on swimming ability, not age. Last week Elliot made his case to the lifeguard quite passionately, pointing out that letting a non-swimming six year old go on the slide but relegating a swimming five year old to the shallow end seems quite unreasonable and not based in any sort of logical system but the lifeguard was completely unmoved, shrugged, and said “You have to be six, kid.”

Elliot’s rage was complete, though it is worth noting here he is not yet a proficient swimmer. His current record is swimming about three metres without a life jacket and we have an understanding that it needs to be about ten metres before he gets more independence at the pool, but I think he liked the idea that getting onto the water slide would be more about skills he could work on and attain at any moment, rather than something stupid like the sun needing to rotate more times around the earth, which is hardly a thing he can speed up. Ellie felt this was most unfair and arbitrary, and on the way home he bitterly declared that we were never, ever going back, with exactly a tone of voice that implied that this decision would surely breed deep regret in the heart of the callous lifeguard. We’ve talked about it since then, with me gently suggesting that his boycott is likely not going to change many rules but learning to swim 10 metres will mean that he’s ready when he is six, so we’re going back.

Elliot will have you know though, he is not talking to that lifeguard. I’ll be knitting the poncho.