Fundraiser Recap

It's been a few weeks coming, but I'm stoked to announce the HUGE SUCCESS that has been both of my Bike & Build fundraisers!!!!

Since January, my family worked diligently and tirelessly to put together a booster night fundraiser for March 7th in my hometown, Riverhead, NY.  This night featured a Chinese auction, live music, great food, a few fun competitions for the kids (and adults), a even a photo booth!  Needless to say, everyone had a really fun time hanging out and getting to know one another.  I was on hand at the event, getting to personally meet everyone and say some words about my trip.  Thank you to my wonderful mom and sister for being the driving force behind this fundraising night and thank you to everyone else who donated money, goods, and music to make this one so successful!  All together, we were able to raise $1019 by this fundraiser!!!

Just last Friday, I held my second fundraiser here in Maryland at the Chesapeake Bay Environmental Center.  This fundraiser brought together friends and family from the surrounding area for a good night of trivia, food, and drinks.  Harpoon brewery was kind enough to sponsor the event with 8 cases of beer and (almost) all the food was cooked by my roommate Katey and myself.  As it turns out, my trivia questions were a bit harder than I anticipated them being (sorry everyone!), but everyone still had a good time nevertheless!  Thank you to Katey and my girlfriend Emily for stepping up and helping out with all of the trivia night planning and running that I could not do just by myself!  Thank you to all the businesses that donated to the event, their donations totaling over $1500!  At this event, we ended with $1006 raised for affordable housing!!!

What does this all mean?!  This means that my fundraising total currently stands at a whopping $5820!!!!  This is far above and beyond my initial goal of $4500 and it all goes straight to supporting affordable housing!!

When i started preparing for this trip, my biggest concern was how i would raise the money to put on such a wonderful trip. What I didn't plan for was how much everyone would want to support me in this endeavor and how many people would willingly donate towards a trip supporting affordable housing. It means so much to me to see everyone coming out to support these events, support my trip, and support affordable housing!  You are all quite wonderful people and I thank you again from the bottom of my heart!

Bicycle Tuesday - Lucky Seven

To everyone, I'd just like to take a minute to share my thoughts on how lucky that I've been to have all of your support while preparing for my upcoming summer with Bike & Build.  Between individual donations, donations not even asked for, everyone who showed up to the booster night fundraiser, and everyone who has given their own personal time in spreading the word about my trip, contacting businesses for donations, and sought out other donors, THANK YOU!!!!!!

There have been some naysayers and some that want no part of supporting the cause, but by and large everyone has had good things to say about Bike & Build and Affordable Housing.  I feel incredibly blessed to have such wonderful friends and family around me right now.  You are all wonderful people and I am lucky to know all of you! Thanks!

Now, for the bicycling part....

Life is like riding a bicycle - in order to keep your balance, you must keep moving.

~Albert Einstein

Bicycle Fitting

A few weeks ago, I sent an email out to Sarah and Stu at Parvilla Cycle looking for ride sponsorship for my Bike & Build trip.  Despite being booked up through April 1st for bicycle fittings, Stu was kind enough to squeeze me in for a static bicycle fitting today at their shop in Edgewater, MD.

Just one-half of the giant Parvilla Cycle & Multisport store

I went in today for my fitting and was immediately blown away by the variety and professionalism of their shop!  I've been to the local Bike Doctor and to my favorite outdoor shops EMS, REI, and HTO (why do they all go by their three-letter abbreviations?), but none of them could touch this place in terms of the high quality gear selection offered.  Since "getting into" road biking for Bike & Buld, I've spent far too much time in researching different products and trying to figure out what would stand the test of time on a long trip and I'll tell you that they feature only the top of the line stuff, not necessarily in price but certainly in quality.

Stu, a co-owner of Parvilla C&M and my bicycle fitter today

When I arrived, Stu had me join him in the back of the store in the bicycle fitting room.  He already had a bicycle trainer out and ready for my bike to be mounted up, so while I went to get changed for the fitting (yep, I had to wear my actual gear... blue jeans were not going to cut it), he got the bike all ready for me to hop on and take it for a spin.  When I first got my bike a few weeks and 50 miles ago, I initially used the free online Competitive Cyclist bicycle sizing tool to get my bike set up roughly to my body size, which seemed to work alright, but I never was that comfortable on it.  I assumed that the unusual and uncomfortable posture was just part of road biking... boy, was I wrong (the unusual posture is normal though)!  Stu showed me, on my own bike, how I had the saddle set at least 3 inches too low, my handlebars were pointed downward too much, and my seat was tipped up by the nose by at least 3 degrees too much.  By fixing my seat and handlebars, he set the bike to cradle my body instead of trying to ditch it off.  While we went through the fitting process (maybe took a half hour?), Stu had me pedal the bicycle under light and full load to watch the motion of my legs to make sure that they were doing what they should.  His attention to detail was fantastic, even going far enough to ask me about any medical issues that might necessitate a different riding posture on the trip.

GURU Dynamic Fit Bike

Bear in mind that this was a static fitting, which Parvilla does not actually offer any more.  These days, the shop offers custom 3D dynamic motion capture fittings on the micro-adjustable GURU dynamic fit bike to make sure that every athlete can get the most out of his/her race bike.  It is obvious that business is doing very well for the company, based on the number of people coming and going while I was there and that Stu is booked on the dynamic fittings for at least another month.  Again I'll applaud their shop for being so kind to squeeze me in for the static fitting, which was much simpler and quicker than the dynamic fitting (which can take a couple hours) and worked quite well for this non-racer.  All in all said, I'm much happier with my bike now and I look forward to cranking out those miles!  Cheers to you, Parvilla Cycle & Multisport! :)

And thank you to my roommate Katey for another impromptu photo shoot!

Full Steam Ahead

(I get really excited about installing door sweeps!)

Hi everyone!  I just wanted to share a little update on everything that has been happening in the big run-up to Bike & Build (starting May 16th!).  A lot has happened in the past week, so let me try to consolidate:

• Last Saturday, I met up with a group of 8 Bike & Builders to spend 6 hours with Rebuilding Together in Alexandria.  What an awesome crew!  I spent the day with 5 B&B alumni (including my girlfriend, Emily) and met two 2014 riders, one of them being on my Southern US (SUS) trip (hi JoBeth!).  We caulked, painted, and installed door knobs at one of RB's foreclosure condos... not bad for a day's work!  That's 6 of my 10 required sweat-equity hours complete!


• As I previously posted, I do have my B&B bike now.  She is sitting pretty in my work office, encouraging me to go on rides after work whenever I can fit in the time.  With everything else going on, it's tough to find time to complete those 500 pre-trip miles, but I'll get it done. :)  I'm currently 21 miles in, so only 479 left!


• Planning is going great for my upcoming fundraisers!  On March 7th, there will be a Bike & Build Booster in Riverhead, NY, which is being organized by my wonderful mom and sister, and on March 27th, we have a Trivia Night Fundraiser here in Maryland at the Chesapeake Bay Environmental Center.  Please see the links on the side of this page for more info!


• Finally, I am excited to share with you that my fundraising has surpassed the 50% mark!  In fact, I'm currently at 57% of my minimum fundraising goal of $4,500 for Bike & Build!  Let's get that all the way up to $4,500 and then some!!! As I've said before, running the Bike & Build trip only takes about half of the total fundraising amount and the rest is given to affordable housing groups to support them in their work.  Any extra fundraising that we can raise together will go straight to worthy affordable housing groups (and I will even get a say in choosing which ones get it!).

That's all for now!  Thank you again to all of my wonderful donors!  The next round of thank you cards will be going out shortly. :)

The Bike & Build Work Crew (2/15/14)

Bicycle Tuesday

Wooh, February, where did you come from?!  Hold on a minute, how long ago was New Years?  Yup, that passed by quickly!  Well, it does seem like time is speeding up these days.  With preparations for Bike & Build (many hours wasted in silly research), planning for fundraisers in MD and NY (details soon to be announced!), volunteer work at the Annapolis Summer Garden Theatre, band practice, time spent with friends and my girlfriend Emily, and my normal 9-5 job, there is just not enough time in the day to squeeze in all that I would like to!

Thankfully, this road has been fairly smooth so far.  My Bike & Build steed is on order (a Giant Defy 2 road bike) and today I get to thank all of my wonderful supporters for helping me make it past one-third of my minimum fundraising goal of $4,500! There's still a long road ahead, but I'm going to continue working my butt off to raise funds and awareness for affordable housing while keeping up with all of the other excitement in my life! To everyone who has donated and to everyone that has wished me good luck, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. It is so refreshing to have everyone supporting me on this major undertaking, and I couldn't do it without you.

Wrapping this intro up, I'd like to thank my roommate Katey for taking the time to help me with an impromptu photo shoot for Bike & Build fundraising pictures.  While I've never been accused of being particularly photogenic, I'll let you decide what you think:

Now, without further adieu, here's Bicycle Tuesday!  I'm adding this in to my blog to showcase the first half of the Bike & Build equation, the bicycling!  Whether it's a small quip about bicycling, a picture from another website (my graphic design skills are minimal, at best), or some other random tidbit, this is one feature that I hope to continue on a weekly basis on this blog!

This week:

"It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle."
~ Ernest Hemingway

"Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live."
~ Mark Twain

Source: http://xkcd.com/880/

The Rent is Too High

I just found one news article that I thought that I'd share with you:
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2013/12/09/Harvard-Confirms-It-Rent-Too-Damn-High

This references a report by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University called America's Rental Housing.  It's a fantastic report written by people with a much more eloquent grasp of the English language than I, so please go ahead and check it out!

Synopsis:
"Rental housing has always provided a broad choice of homes for people at all phases of life. The recent economic turmoil underscored the many advantages of renting and raised the barriers to homeownership, sparking a surge in demand that has buoyed rental markets across the country. But significant erosion in renter incomes over the past decade has pushed the number of households paying excessive shares of income for housing to record levels. Assistance efforts have failed to keep pace with this escalating need, undermining the nation’s longstanding goal of ensuring decent and affordable housing for all."



In other news, thank you letters are well on their way to every donor who has given so far!  If you have donated and haven't received one in the mail this week, please let me know as soon as possible and I will contact you to verify your mailing address and will send another. Thank you again to every donor, past and future!

 

Where has December gone?

Today is a pretty special day for me, because not only did I get a special package in the mail yesterday (my official Bike & Build safety triangle - as seen above), but I also handed in my letter for a leave of absence at my current job today!  These may not seem like much, but they signify the first tangible parts of my upcoming trip.  As for that safety triangle...one of the many required contract signatures for this trip requires that I will be wearing my safety triangle at all times while bicycling across the country (yes, mom, I promise!).  With that, I'm well on my way towards next summer!

I'd like to take a minute tonight to show my appreciation to everyone.  This trip couldn't happen without the support of all of my friends and family, so to everyone who has kept an eye on this page, thank you!  To my four fundraising donors so far, THANK YOU!!!  While I will continue to ask for help with meeting my fundraising minimum, it is the support and excitement that everyone has shown so far that is even more valuable to me than the fundraising!  I have so many things going on in my life now that I've been out of college for a few years and have so many reasons to not take this chance to do this trip, to have everyone backing me just means more than I could ever say! Thank you again!