PedalGirl's
This is my friend Kristi that I met at
O'Hare. She is a ... well, I'm not going to divulge her age because we
women... we just don't do that! LOL But, she is close to my age is
married, has 3 young children and is a breast cancer survivor. That first
night at the Summit we watched the webcast of the Town Hall on Cancer on my
laptop in my hotel room before heading down to the hotel bar. We drank
margaritas, shared appetizers and talked late into the evening. From that evening
on Kristi and I would spend most of our off time together. On Friday Night, our off
night, we ran the Pig Run together. Well, actually we walked that 5k and were the
very last participants to cross the finish line. We didn't care about being last, we
were having fun. After the 5k we ate ribs at the Jazz & Rib Fest before heading back
to the hotel.
Summit
Sessions
Friday morning we all filled into
Mershon Auditorium where in this opening session we were addressed by
Lance Armstrong and then former Surgeon General Dr. Richard Carmona.
Dr. Carmona detailed the National Call To
Action that had been announced in Washington, DC just the day before.
We all left that first session inspired and ready to get to our various sessions
or "tracks" and get to work.
The first order of business in my
Fundraising 2 "Blue" track was to split this very large group of people into 13
teams of 8 or 9 people each. As it would turn out, not only would this
weekend be a learning experience, it would be a competition. My team was
the Blue Spurs. The Blue Spurs are Tim, Keith, Vicky, Tami, Meg, Trish,
Jessica and myself. Our first competition was to film a 60 second
fundraising commercial. We had 40 minutes to complete our video
debut. Not a lot of time, but we managed to put together a commercial we
were proud of. As it would turn out, our video took 1st place in our track
and would be shown at the closing session along with the winning videos from all
the other tracks. The second day of our track session the
competition was planning a fundraising house party. Three teams were
chosen at random to actually simulate their plan. Our team was not chosen
to simulate our plan, however, the winner of the competition would be chosen
based on their plan not on the simulation. Once again, the Blue Spurs'
plan "Funraising Tailgate Party" won the competition. I am proud to
report that our Blue Spurs won the overall competition for the weekend. We were
awarded the video cameras that were used to make the commercials and were
announced as the Blue Track winners at the closing session.
One final and quite amazing story from
the summit.... as I was taking my seat at Mershon Auditorium for the
Summit closing session I looked across the aisle from me and saw a familiar
face. Two weeks prior to the Summit I had met a woman on the road during
the LIVESTRONG Challenge. I didn't even get this woman's name at the time
but we had been riding at about the same pace. I would pass her up, she
would pass me up. She came over to me at one of the power stops to tell me
she wasn't going to be able to finish the ride due to a knee injury but she
wanted to wish me good luck with the rest of the ride. I thanked her and
didn't think much more about it. I was just trying to get through the
ride. I was already exhausted and was emotional. Now... here at the
Summit, at the last event before leaving for the airport, sitting just across
the aisle from me was that same woman. Wow! That just blew my
mind. So I went over to her and asked her if she remembered me from the
ride... she did! She told me of how she had worried about me since she
didn't see me at the end of the ride and that she had written about me in her
blog. Written about me??? I was amazed. She handed me her card
and took a picture and said she was going to write about finding me on her
blog. I put her card in my pocket and took my seat. Later,
when I looked at her card, the information looked familiar. I
thought, I've seen this blog before. Months and months before. The
woman is Marie Westrope and she writes a blog on Trek's Women Who Ride web
site. I happened to be sitting next to Marie on the bus to the
airport! How is it we were at the same Summit all weekend are just now
finding each other at the end??? Must be fate! We talked about
keeping in touch and even doing some riding together since we live pretty close
to each other. Matter of fact, she mentioned riding Back Bay... I ride
Back Bay all the time!!! A couple of days after coming home, I
checked out Marie's blog and saw what she had written about me after the
Challenge. Her words brought me to tears. She managed to
capture what we (I) was doing out there so well. I was so touched that a perfect
stranger had paid attention to me and seemed to see what I was going through on
that bike even as I was trying to hide how I was hurting both physically and
emotionally. Marie has now posted a new blog entry about finding me
at the Summit and how the experiences at the Summit have touched her.
Marie, you are awesome! You go girl!!! You can follow Marie's
blog at Women Who Ride.
After my mother passed away due to
Pancreatic Cancer in November of 2007, just 4 short months after diagnosis, I
thought I never wanted to deal with cancer again. I didn't want to see it,
I didn't want to talk about it and I sure didn't want to think about
it. The Challenge coming back to California this year changed
that. I wanted to ride, because that's what I do. I, PedalGirl,
ride my bike. I found out about the Summit though my
participation in the Challenge. I wanted to go to the Summit to learn how
to be a better fundraiser for my next Challenge event. I could not
have known at the time that I applied to the Summit, how I would
be affected by the people I met, the stories I heard and the
friends I made. This experience, all evidence to the
contrary, has me at a loss at how to explain how I've
been affected. There are friends that I've not been able to mention
here... just because this page is getting too long and I fear that nobody
will read it in its entirety. But, you all know who you
are and we'll keep in touch for sure.
To see all my pictures from
the Summit weekend as well as Challenge weekend go HERE.
LIVESTRONG!!
~~~ PedalGirl
(Lisa)
The four days I spent at the LIVESTRONG
Summit merit more than just a normal blog entry. So here it is... my
LIVESTRONG Summit page.
I left Orange County early on Thursday
morning, the sun wasn't even up yet. I was nervous but excited when
I got on the plane headed towards Columbus, Ohio and my very first LIVESTRONG
Summit. I was traveling alone and wasn't quite sure what lie ahead of me
for the weekend. What would the weekend be like? What would we
do? Who would I meet? Would I make my way through the Summit weekend
alone as I had on LIVESTRONG Challenge weekend? I had known of 3
others who were to be on that first flight from the OC to Chicago, but I saw no
familiar faces at the airport and no yellow shirts as I had expected
to. They had tried to put me on a later flight when I checked in...
but I balked and they got me on my original flight, maybe the others had not
been so lucky.
When my plane landed in Chicago I found
that my connecting flight to Columbus would be delayed. I was really
disappointed that due to the delay I would miss the Presidential Town Hall on
Cancer being held that first night. That event was the entire reason I had
changed my original travel plans in order to get to Columbus earlier. Now
I would be stuck in Chicago waiting for a plane that would be delayed for more
than 2 hours. As I arrived at the gate to wait for that second
plane, a woman who was sitting there noticed my yellow shirt and asked if I was
going to the Summit. I was indeed, so I sat down in the empty seat next
to her and we quickly became friends.