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 –
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.