Sunday, March 25, 2012

LOGOS!


We now have an official logo for our ride! We would like to give Dan Cook a very big thank you for designing and drawing this up for us! It turned out great!

Friday, March 23, 2012

Salsa Bikes Arrive

Hello! I received my new Salsa Via 3 bike today all the way from Minneapolis, courtesy of Salsa Bike Company! I would like to thank the guys at Hellgate Cyclery generously built my bike for free. I'm excited to test out the new ride on a 36 mile MOBI ride at 10:00 am from Missoula to Clinton tomorrow!!!



Thursday, March 15, 2012

Meeting with MOBI

Hello all!
Yesterday we met with MOBI (Missoula on Bicycles) to see if we could use their rides for our bike-a-thon. They were enthusiastic about it and are going to sponsor us! MOBI puts on an array of rides that will be great for our fundraiser.
We would also really like to ask people to start donating via this page. The donate button is in the right margin and you can either pay from your paypal account or by credit card. If you don't want to do this, you can give (or send) the money to us personally. We need to raise $5,000 for the first half of the trip alone! Any amount would help. And also, please share this page and our facebook page with anyone and everyone, the more people, the better! Thanks

Monday, March 12, 2012

money bagsWe got our first donation today!!!! A generous contribution made by Bryan and Amy Reilly has kick-started our fundraising! Please follow in their footsteps and donate some money towards our cause. Thanks!!!

Sunday, March 11, 2012


A Bike Story for Cory
http://bikestory4cory.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/ABikeStoryForCory




Hello!

I realized that as Mac and I started to get caught up in promoting our ride over facebook and our blog that we need to provide a general overview of what we are doing. So I will start at the beginning, explaining what exactly we are doing and how you can help. To start, we are Drew Gottman and Mac Sullivan, two Hellgate High School students who are riding Salsa sponsored bikes across the United States this Summer for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD). We will be riding for Cory Stalling, an extraordinary 11 year old kid who attends Paxson Elementary School. He is an extraordinarily brave kid who has battled this disease for his entire life, and we are honored to be riding for him. This bike ride will serve as our senior project with Arlen Hall as our mentor.

What is Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD)?
PreviewDuchenne Muscular Dystrophy is a genetic, degenerative muscular disease that shows up almost always in males. It occurs in about 1 in 3500 people. What happens is the essential muscular protein Dystrophin is unable to be produced by the body. What this causes is a gradual deterioration of all muscles in the body, including cardiac muscles. The average lifespan of someone with DMD is 30 years old. However I believe this entertaining and inspiring video can explain DMD better than I can.

The Ride:
We are departing Seaside, Oregon on Memorial Day. We will be riding with Ty Miller, a really cool Kansas college student who is a leader in training for the JettRide (http://jettride.jettfoundation.org/), a ride that fundraises a ton of money for DMD. We will be riding into Missoula on or near June 6-7! From here we will continue onto Minneapolis MN by June 30. On July 1st we will be joining with the JettRide. Along with 12-14 other teens we will travel across the Midwest to Pleasant Point, NJ; arriving there on August 3. Cory will be there to greet us as we arrive!!! Everyone, who wants to, will be able to track our progress via a Spot GPS unit (this will be donated, purchased, or borrowed for our trip).

Fundraising: Our fundraising will be broken into 3 categories.
1. Self Contained Ride from Seaside to Minneapolis we will be participating in DMD events and spending time with DMD families as we ride. We need to raise $5000 total or $2500 per rider for this part of the ride. This money will be put towards food, transportation, equipment, camping, and other miscellaneous expenses. We plan to raise this money through direct donations and our ride-a-thon fundraiser. We have selected a number of Missoulians on Bicycles (MOBI) rides over the course of this spring (March - May) that will sum to approximately 300 miles riding. Donors can pledge an amount per mile or a flat sum. You can access this pledge form on this link or access it either on our blog (http://bikestory4cory.blogspot.com/) or our facebook page. If you could pledge even a small amount this would help us immensely for motivation for these rides, bringing awareness to MOBI rides, and get the word out on our self-contained ride.

2. Equipment: We have a list of equipment that we will need in order to accomplish this ride. Salsa bicycles (http://salsacycles.com/) has generously donated bicycles for this ride and we are being sponsored by them. We also need a camera, bike computers, extra tires, tubes, panniers, maps, etc. We plan to raise this money through business sponsorships and donations.

3. JettRide: Participating in the JettRide is going to be a great opportunity for us to do the second leg of our trip! We'll have the opportunity to meet other teens and do some great activities, but really the point of doing this is to raise money and bring awareness to DMD. We have committed to raising $3500 a piece for the JettRide. These donations are tax deductible and can be made through a page (soon to be set up) on the JettRide website.

How You Can Make A Difference:

  • Spread the Word - "Like" our Facebook page, share our posts from our blog and our page with others, talk about it with friends or other cyclists, let us know if we should contact anyone about events, fundraising or equipment.
  • Help us Fundraise - Email our bike-a-thon pledge sheet out to other people, donate to our self-contained ride or the JettRide using or paypal link, contribute gear to our equipment list.
  • Help bring awareness to DMD - Let's all give a helping hand to Cory Stalling and others like him and bring awareness to DMD and their cause. Don't forget: this is what our ride is about!!!!!!


Sunday, March 4, 2012

Wilderness First Aid

Hello Everyone! 
This is our first official blog post! This weekend, Drew and I took a wilderness first aid course at the University of Montana put on by Aerie. It was two days and eight hours each day, talk about an exhausting weekend! Anyway, we had a lot of fun, it was a great experience and we REALLY learned a lot (in case one of us gets injured in the middle of nowhere...). It was a great class, the instructors were awesome and we highly recommend taking one of their classes. Thanks for reading!
-Mac Sullivan
https://aeriemedicine.com/