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, March 22, 2008

A letter to the donors

First of all, thank you so much. I've been overwhelmed by the generosity. According to the guidelines for the ride I was expected to raise at least $750. I thought that for 300 miles of riding and 8,000 feet of climbing I should do better than that. Heck, I'd pay more than that not to do it! So, I doubled it and set the goal at $1500.Well, thanks to all of you that goal was passed in the first 2 days! So, I doubled it again and let it ride, sure enough $3000 is now in the rear view mirror and we are a bit north of $4000!

Well, now it's time for me to follow up on my part of the deal. As I write this I'm sitting in a hotel in Bakersfield. Tomorrow morning the local support group is providing breakfast at 7:00 and at 8:00 we shuttle over to where the riders ended yesterday.If it wasn't clear, my ride is part of a larger effort. The riders started in Sacramento last Saturday, and have ridden about 300 miles to Bakersfield. The goal for the entire group is to raise $50,000. Last year Kyle Bryant, the ride oganizer, raised $40,000 for FA research. At dinner tonight Kyle announced that we have surpassed the $100,000 mark!

There are some great sites to keep track of the ride in progress. http://rideataxia.beenup2.com/ has a lot of pictures of the ride in progress. Click on the activity link for a better organized view of the pics. There is already a Tim Towers sighting in one of the pictures, kinda blurry though. Seanbaum is one of the "Speedy Boys" and key ride organizers. I met him today and found out that he was diagnosed with FA less than a year ago. Travis and Mike are 2 more of the Speedy Boys and are friends of Sean. Another one of the Speedy Boys is their friend Luke who has flown out from Germany just to participate in the ride.

Kyle's blog has more of a narrative. Check it out at http://rideataxia.blogspot.com/

Finally, be sure to check out Linda and Andy's blog. Linda is 44 and was diagnosed with FA a couple of year's ago. They have come from New York to participate and seem to be having a great time. http://www.lindasride.org/Thanks again.Bart
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