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.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Tall order

The good thing about the mountains right now is that they're not too hot. The bad thing about the mountains right now is that they're mountains. I felt like Sisyphus pushing all that weight up those Appalachian slopes. They went up and up and up for so long that I forgot what a down hill was. There was something comforting about hearing my heart pound out those arduous inches like a metronome, and trying to keep my pedal strokes and my breath in time with that insistant beat. When we finally got over the summit, all the way down the other side I couldn't stop saying "Thank you, God, thank you my good, sweet God, dear God, thank you..."

A lot of mangled, twisted animal bodies litter the shoulder, their mouths flung open and their souls spilling out, oily and dark, onto the black top. Sad sight. More people should ride bicycles.

We spent the other night in a volunteer firehouse in St. Thomas, about 35 miles from Gettysburg. The company was a great bunch of guys, many thanks to them for taking us in and being so nice to us. Last night we slept in Bedford, 46 miles further, in the shadow of the world's biggest monster retail monopoly, whose odious name will go unmentioned, here.

2 comments:

LewisandClark said...

What goes up must come down, or so says Newton or Galileo. Congratulations on conquering the Alleghanies. A good appetizer for the long, gentle climb through Kansas followed by the steep mile high Rocky Mountains.

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