Bart's Ride

Welcome. I'm Bart Rupel, husband, father of two great kids, and to make ends meet an engineer.

My son, Matt, was diagnosed in 2004 with Friedreich's Ataxia, or FA for convienence. FA is a progressive neuro-muscular disease that robs a person’s ability to coordinate their movements. This eventually leads to full time wheelchair use and…

There is hope though. Some very hard working people have gotten us close to finding a cure for FA. This effort is spearheaded by FARA.

In 2007, Kyle Bryant, a young man with FA rode his recumbant bicycle 2,400 miles to the annual national ataxia conference in Memphis, TN. Along the way he raised $40,000 and generated a lot of publicity.

In 2008, Kyle is going to ride 600 miles to the conference in Las Vegas, NV. I’ve decided to join him for half the ride, starting in Bakersfield, CA.

Saturday, January 26, 2008

First Training Ride

The bike is ready to go, but the rider needs some work. Also, there is no backing out now. I've been overwhelmed by the response to my ride donation website. According to the guidelines for the ride I'm supposed to raise at least $125 per day that I ride. So, 6 days would be $750. Sounds bit meager, so I set a goal of $1500 and crossed my fingers. That was just a couple of days ago and so far the donations total $2325!

OK. Running out of time, so let's get to it. Thursday night after work, cold a bit wet, and an out of practice rider. Put on the layers, new batteries in the head light, and set the Super Flash to flash mode. 8 miles later and 40 minutes later, I'm done. Not too bad. I stayed close to home, riding laps around small portion of Calabazas creek.

Map of the ride.

Of course when I got back from the ride, there, in the entry way, a wind trainer. You know it looks like this. My friend Ben dug it out of his garage so I could train indoors during the inclement weather we are experiencing. It does rain in California! He dropped it off about 5 minutes after I left for my cold ride.

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