Ride for Kids!

The party celebrating Kyra & Daddy's birthdays came one day late but had a whole lot of style. It all started exactly a week ago watching late, late, late shows while feeding a baby. One outdoors show was talking about a fundraiser ride for brain tumor kids... then the station went to commercial. I called the national number on Monday to find out about it and before I got any real information our entire family was officially signed up for a motorcycle trip up Emigration Canyon on August 14.

The Ride for Kids is a fundraiser for the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation. Any kids who have had brain tumors and their families are invited to be "guests of honor" for the day. In the parking lot of This is the Place Monument, two parents with a whole lot of duckies following behind kind of stood out in a crowd of black leather and 80 decked-out Harleys and Hondas. We got t-shirts, do-rags (even Zach), breakfast, and then the kids and Dad loaded up in sidecars with and headed up to Morgan with Mom bringing up the rear of the whole procession. It took a little over an hour and Kyra, Zach and Jason all took great naps on the way.

We had lunch at the park in Morgan while they introduced 11 other brain tumor kids and announced that during this ride they were able to raise over $35,000 for pediatric brain tumor research. Pretty impressive! All the kids were interviewed - the chairman asked Sada if she'd like to say anything special to the audience - 100+ bikers in leather, chains, lots of long beards and braids, and a couple of braided beards. Sada warned them that if they ever ride in a sidecar, they'd better get comfortable at the beginning because being squished for an hour is REALLY miserable. She didn't mention that she'd ridden cuddled up with a 6'4" dad in a one-person seat.

Bike #5 had Jeff and Sada, another brain tumor girl on the seat and the driver. Bike #8 was loaded with Jason and Paige in the sidecar strapped in with a five-point racing harness, Alexis on back, and the driver. The chopper behind them had an adorable chiuaua in a black leather jacket named Rusty who had a case permanently attached on the back of the bike and a blinged-out sign hanging from the case that said "Are we there yet?"

The song that came on the radio as I was driving up the canyon with Zach and Kyra following 12 state troopers on cycles with flashing lights and a mile long line of reving engines pretty much said it all:

It's something unpredictable
But in the end it's right....
I hope you had the time of your life

P.S. If you watch this video, Sada and Jeff drive by at 1:14 and Paige, Jason and Alexis pass by at 1:22.