A message from the Connecticut Burns Care Foundation

Ryan and Dwight hope to raise $10,000 to support the burn camp, which will host 70 children between the ages of 8 and 18. They are determined to reach the West Coast as a personal challenge as well as helping young burn survivors.

Started in 1991, the Arthur C. Luf Children's Burn Camp is located in northern Connecticut on 176 acres. Every summer, burn survivors come to the burn camp, which is a safe and fun environment that helps kids heal emotionally and physically. The Burn Camp is free to the children, who come primarily from the Northeast and some foreign counteries, but any burn survivor child anywhere is welcome. More than 70 adult counselors, primarily active and retired firefighters and burn unit nurses, occupational and physical therapists, child psychologists and even a doctor will serve as mentors for the week.

It's also our goal to promote burn awareness and fire prevention and education, which we do year around. We sponsor a burn survivor, burned in a car accident that involved speeding and drinking alcohol, who speaks to high school students throughout Connecticut. We also support the burn unit at Bridgeport Hospital, helping to purchase equipment.

Monday, June 30, 2008

Dear Indiana,

I love your gentle breezes, and your sweet, little bitty hills that go so softly under my tread. I love them even more than total flatness, because they shield me from the wind, and they break up the monotony of an absolute plane. I love that deep blue over head that blurs into lightness around the edges, and all those benign, white clouds that dot the sky like a ghostly archipelago, or a herd of white stags. O, Indiana, I could roll on like this, forever.


Halfway through Ohio I started singing mariachi songs to pass the time as I rode along, and when I ran out of those I started singing anything else I could think of. Halfway through Indiana I became manic and started singing odes to the countryside. The sun and the sky and the fields were so beautiful. And, unlike Ryan, I don't have an iPod, so I have to find ways of amusing myself.

We had to cross some un-pavement to avoid getting way off course


These signs make me so sad. I can't blame a person for wanting some privacy, it just seems a shame that a fella can't wander down that lonesome road in search of shelter, or even conversation. I guess they save us time by letting us know straight off where we're not welcome.

The last of nine lives was wasted, here. Shame.

Amber waves of grain...


Ryan takes a sample

The day we left Fremont we rode 70 miles to Defiance, Ohio. That's the day we passed through the fair city of Wayne. The next day lightning storms kept us off the road for most of the morning, and strong head winds slowed our progress the rest of the day. As a result, we only made it about 44 miles, but we did make it across the state line and ended up in Auburn, Indiana. Yesterday we rode from Auburn to just south of Wakarusa, about 70 miles. As we approached Goshen we saw clouds unlike the puffy whites behind us. These had bellies dark with water, pregnant with the coming storm. So we got stuck in Goshen for a while. But the sun stays out later as we go west, so after the storm passed we had light until almost 10:00, and we rode through a glorious dusk.

A wonderful couple at a fork in the road let us camp on their lawn, last night. Their young daughter followed our movements with great interest from the rear window as we set up camp in the back yard. I think she was talking to the cat about us. Total cuteness. In the morning she brought out breakfast her mom had prepared, and handed it into our tents. So nice.

3 comments:

Jon Peters said...

So, you're in Indiana already! Wow. That's a lot of country in a month on a bike. Very impressed. Keep it up!

Unknown said...

Santa Barbara? Make your way down the coast to San Diego! Sunshine and pretty girls waiting for you!

Ryan said...

Definitely! We're gonna have to visit San Diego...