Journeys: Cache Valley, Utah - MS Bike Ride 2008 - Biking

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Cache Valley, Utah - MS Bike Ride 2008 - Biking

This past weekend was the MS Bike Ride in Cache Valley. Thanks to my family and friends I exceeded my fund raising goal and raised a total of $1,170! I'm lucky to know such awesome people!

The weather was perfect and by starting at 7.00am we were able to complete a lot of miles before it got too hot. Rob and I both completed the full 175 mile course through Cache Valley in Northern Utah. The ride took us along back country roads through small farming communities north into Idaho and then south of Logan up Blacksmith Fork Canyon and around the southern portion of Cache Valley. The scenery was amazing and the miles flew by .. except at the end .. those seemed like some long miles!

3,000 riders participated in the event and we raised over 1.7 million dollars to fight multiple sclerosis. The MS Bike ride is the largest biking event in Utah and is also the state's largest fund raiser. The volunteers and support are absolutely incredible!! They make sure all riders are well fed and watered all weekend. You couldn't find a nicer and more supportive group of people anywhere.

the starting line

me at Logan Fairgrounds with my new toy :)

rest stop with a sea of bikes

so far so good

Rob in Blacksmith Fork Canyon

end of the ride

"One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am – a reluctant enthusiast….a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards"

-- Edward Abbey

"The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls. "

-- John Muir

"To be whole. To be complete. Wildness reminds us what it means to be human, what we are connected to rather than what we are separate from."

-- Terry Tempest Williams

"There may be people who feel no need for nature. They are fortunate, perhaps. But for those of us who feel otherwise, who feel something is missing unless we can hike across land disturbed only by our footsteps or see creatures roaming freely as they have always done, we are sure there should be wilderness. Species other than man have rights, too. Having finished all the requisites of our proud, materialistic civilization, our neon-lit society, does nature, which is the basis for our existence, have the right to live on? Do we have enough reverence for life to concede to wilderness this right?"

-- Margaret E. Murie

"I have always been unsatisfied with life as most people live it. Always I want to live more intensely and richly. Why muck and conceal one's true longings and loves, when by speaking of them one might find someone to understand them, and by acting on them one might discover oneself?"

-- Everett Ruess