Living Life as It Happens: the Day I Got a Big Surprise

On June 1st the #GCCCanada started.  Again as last year my goals are the same: 100 km and $500. 

As many of you already know #GCCCanada has become a large part on my personal journey towards recovery from workplace abuse.  It gave me the motivation to get on my adapted bike, now named Freedom Hope, and start challenging myself to ride.

In my younger days, I used to ride a 5 speed Schwinn which was built like a Sherman tank and just about as heavy, somewhere in the vicinity of 5-10 miles a day.  I wanted to do that again.  However, ongoing challenges with balance issues - and other brain related things - prevented that.

UNTIL I decided to change the way I was attempting to ride.  I went to a local bike store, talked with one of the young men there and together we came up with this: 

Heading back from where we turned around on the group ride.
Wearing my colours proudly.

A regular 7 speed bike with adult training wheels for the balance problems.

It works.

However, after relearning how to ride in a local parking lot - going round and round and round again in both directions, I stopped riding again.

I wanted to actually be able to go places, to ride to a coffee shop, to ride out of town, even to ride to do errands.

However, the terrain wasn't allowing that to happen.

Completing my first group ride ever - the Cataract trail
(again something I never though I could do).

What I call my "hood" is triangle shaped and composed of dead end streets inside the area.  Bounding my "hood" are major arteries, some in town, some now, one river and hills.  In any direction I go, there are hills.  Some more challenging then others.  But hills nonetheless.

I got discouraged.  When I get discouraged I get frustrated.  When I get frustrated, everything stops.

One day, a few years back, I saw the Great Cycle Challenge Canada, a ride to raise funds for research for pediatric cancer at Sick Kids hospital in Toronto, on Facebook.  What was different about this fundraiser from others is that rather than meeting at a certain time, on a certain day, and riding a set route, the participant sets their own goals, both distance and kilometres.  The rider has the entire month of June to achieve her goals and can change them at any time.

This sounded like a possible to me.  So I signed up in 2016 for the first time.

My goals were: 50 km and $50.

I had no idea if I could meet those goals.

I not only met my goals but way exceeded them.

I rode 225 km in that challenge and raised $244.40.  I learned that I could do things I never knew I could do.

I found places in my "hood" that I never knew existed.  I even rode in traffic and on hills.  As my borders and boundaries expanded, I began to come alive as never before.

Pumped up, I signed up in 2017 for a second go round.

This time my goals were 100 km and $500 (gulp).

I definitely didn't know if I could meet either goal - especially the $500 one.  I self funded myself at the very beginning so that other, potential donors, would know that I was willing to put my money where my goal was.

The Great Cycle Challenge features different riders at times, almost all of them on 2-wheeled bikes, proudly sporting their jerseys, with details such as how much they're raised and how many km they've ridden.  I wanted so very much to have that kind of recognition and acknowledgement.  I wanted to belong.

I did meet my challenge of 100 km.  I did meet the  $500 goal a little past the middle of the month of June BUT when I ordered the much coveted jersey, it didn't come and didn't come.  Shipping labels were created but the jersey did not arrive at Canada Poste.  For more than a week, I waited checking the tracking information frequently.  Finally I e-mailed the Great Cycle Challenge - and got no response.  Then I started phoning them - and got the easy answers: it would be taken to Canada Poste for the next shipping which would be soon.  I asked them to follow up and get back to me.

They didn't.

I got frustrated.  I got discouraged.  I stopped all cycling.

Eventually, I did get the coveted jersey, the last day of June.  My anticipation of wearing the jersey proudly for the rest of the challenge, ended. 

So it was with a lot of conflicted feelings that I signed up for my third consecutive year with the Great Cycle Chgallenge Canada.

With the same goals: 100 km/ $500 donations.

Only I decided that I wasn't going to bust my butt to get the $500.  Or if I did, if I really wanted the jersey, I would see how far I could go on the donations before the challenge started on June 1st and I would self fund so that it would arrive in time for me to wear it while riding.

Note:    In this challenge, we set our own goals, we ride any time we want, wherever we want during the month of June.  For that reason, most of us never meet each other and we ride alone.  That is why I coveted the jersey.  That is why I got so discouraged when it didn't arrive.  I wanted to belong.

Freedom Hope and myself getting ready to ride.  A word of explanation: a lot of cyclists raise their bikes above their heads in a victory pose.   With Freedom being clumsy and heavy, this is my adaptation of the victory pose.

Last week, someone from the #GCCCanada called me, as they always do before the challenge begins, to check up. At the end of the conversation, the lady asked me if I had any thing to comment. For once, I said: "Yes". I went on to tell her that their marketing strategy was geared to what I call the "lean and mean", meaning the tall, fit, mostly younger ones with long legs and lighter weight two-wheeled bikes who can cycle rings around me and who can raise more than $1000 in donations BEFORE the challenge starts. 

 I told her how the #GCCCanada has been a vital force in my ongoing road to recovery and told her about the "brain injury" from stress in the workplace that had prevented me from being able to ride again and how a local cycle shop (#KingStreetCycle) had adapted a regular bike for me. I told her some of my victories. She listened! 

I told the listener about last year and the jersey. I told her that since workplace abuse was about isolation and exclusion and also about lack of appreciation, I got discouraged and quit riding. I told all this and more to the listener on the other end of the phone. Then Tuesday, I got a notice from the #GCCCanada that they were gifting me the jersey for this year because they are impressed with my story of recovery! 

A selfie taken on my first ride for the challenge this year in the parking lot where I relearned to ride.

The coveted jersey arrived two days later, on June 1st in time for me to wear it during the challenge.

My new "biking" shoes.  A find at a garage sale I was passing.

But things haven't ended there.  That simple act of acknowledgement spurred me on to do things I didn't believe I could do.

Like raise the entire $500 without resorting to self funding.

Like encouraging me to get on Freedom Hope proudly and ride.

What can I say? I never lost my sense of humour and here it is in full.
Posing with Freedom Hope in my jersey and helmet with bling stilettos.
It doesn't get much better than this.

I know I'm not the meanest or the leanest.

I realize that in reality I'm short and sassy.

Or maybe I should say, strong and courageous.

I'll never be the top of the back.  Rather I'm more the cow's tail. Moooooove.

But I'm OK with that.

I'm learning to be OK with being me.