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.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Catch Up post

Time slips by...

I have kept up my training as much as possible since my last posting. On Monday Feb 11th I got it together to commute to work by bike. It went very well. I'll plan to do that every day that I can.
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Unfortunately, I had to travel to Denver the next day for work. I stayed at an Embassy Suites with a gym that had stationary bikes and other equipment so I managed to get in a one hour workout Tuesday night. Wednesday was a long day, but I made it back into the gym on Thursday morning for 1/2 and hour.

Friday I was our departure day for Flagstaff, AZ for a friends and family vacation. I strapped the bike to the roof of the van so I can try and keep up the training while on vacation. Part of the drive was along part of the route that I will be taking on the trip to Vegas. Let's just say that the training must continue...

We reached Flagstaff on Saturday evening and on Sunday I went for a short, but difficult ride. Flagstaff is at 7000 feet. I went a bit over 9 miles, up and down hills, dodging the icy patches and trying to keep my toes from freezing.

Here's the route I rode:

http://veloroutes.org/bikemaps/?route=7831

The elevation map doesn't look right to me, but the total gain of 900 feet seems about right. After the ride we went to Sedona for the day.

Monday we went to the Grand Canyon, and yesterday my "training" coninued with a day of snowboarding at the Arizona.

It's supposed to snow off and on for the rest of our time here so my training will probably be more snowboarding.
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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Where RU? No posts since February 20th! RU still training? Your team awaits you!

Linda and Andy

March 18, 2008 at 8:09 AM

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