Day Zero

I’m sitting at my desk, and it’s “Day Zero” for the bike rally, which is what Ken calls Packing Day. That’s the day before departure, the day that we show up with all the worldly goods we’ll need for the next week (including our knitting) and load it all into bins and walk away from it. The support volunteers will drive it to our Day One stop for tomorrow night, and then we’ll cycle 114km to catch up with it. (That sounds bonkers, doesn’t it?) It’s rather late – or at least it’s Bike Rally late, which means that it’s not even gone nine yet and I’m ready for bed. I have to be awake ridiculously early in the morning – I haven’t quite done the math but I’ve got to be up, dressed, fed, caffeinated and across town with a sunny attitude and a ready bike at 7am and that sounds like such a challenge if I am not absolutely lying in my bed by 10pm.

Ken’s here, he’s upstairs puttering with a few things, and Joe’s watching the Olympics and I’m sitting here taking a few minutes to write to you before I go up and lie down and begin the night before process of anxiously making a mental list of all the things I don’t want to forget tomorrow. My bike jersey has three pockets and Ken has a small backpack that I can put things in- he’ll stash it with one of the drivers. I’ve got to remember to pack my toothbrush after I use it, and to bring three chamois butters in my pockets (one for me, one for Jen and one for Fenner) and I need my ID (whoops, I think I put that in my bins) and I kept out a little bit of knitting – just the socks that I started for my Self-Imposed-Sock-of-the-Month Club, and they’re just a bit of toes but I still want to take them and I’ll need something to knit as we make our way there.

I also have to remember my puffer – a new addition to my checklist. A year after having Covid I still have virus-induced asthma. It’s crappy. I’d hoped it would give up and wander off but despite a perfect lifetime of terrific asthma-free lung function -15 months post-covid I can’t cycle more than a few blocks without wheezing like an old accordion. (Thanks Covid, you’re a jerk.) It’s a whole new thing learning to carry the medicine with me when ride, but I’m getting the hang and it works, so that’s kinda motivating.

As we did a few last minute tasks tonight, putting our license plates on our bikes, organizing our jerseys and shoes and bike shorts for tomorrow and I told Ken that I am officially at the “why do I do this to myself” phase of getting ready. I’ve been there all day – It’s so much work and it’s so tiring and tomorrow’s supposed to be about 40 degrees (that’s 104 for our American friends) and the Rally is hard, so so hard, and and while I do all of it and think about the week ahead of me it helps to revisit all the reasons I bother.

I could go on forever about how important the work that PWA does is. I could tell you about the difference that they make in the lives of people with HIV and AIDS. I could tell you about the people I have met that have explained to me that PWA saved their life. That they got back a sense of belonging and community and comfort, or that it’s the place where they don’t feel ashamed, or stigmatized or that it’s the place that helped them get the meds that they need to be healthy and to get them to an undetectable viral load so that not only are they healthy, but they’re not able to pass it on to anyone else, stopping this beast in its tracks. I could tell you that PWA helped them get a haircut. I could tell you that they helped them with vet services for a beloved pet, or provided the skills and confidence to get a job, or gave them access to the Essentials Market (a much more dignified name for a food bank) to get the food that they needed to feed their kids this week, or provided child care or a drive for a medical appointment.

Mostly though, I would tell you that like almost everyone who rides the Rally, I’m doing it because there is a kind of world I want to live in, and I think that we all have a responsibility to try and build it together, and that those of us who are able to show up and fundraise and make some noise have a moral obligation to do just that on behalf of not just the clients who need the service systems we’re building, but for those of us who simply can’t. Maybe that’s you right now. Maybe the most you can do right now to build that kind of world is read this, and think about it. Maybe the most you can do is donate. Maybe donating is impossible for you and the way you can help is to forward the request to someone who can – putting it on your feed or on your socials. Maybe you are someone who needs to use these services yourself. *

Anyway, tomorrow as I start my ride with Team Knit, that’s what I’lll be thinking about. Doing my best to fundraise, and raise awareness and well… it’s going to be really hard. As always, you are the missing piece. Team Knit”s efforts change nothing without your help, and we are so grateful for you and any help you can give, no matter what it looks like.

Team Knit is:

Me. (Stephanie)

Ken (like always)

Cameron (currently away for an important family time)

Jen (welcome back Jen, it’s been 8 years)

Fenner (Jen’s kid, now a whopping 16 years old and old enough!

I think I’ve figured out how to blog from my ipad, so there’s a tiny chance I’ll be able to do that on the ride or in Montreal- and in my last blog post I said that I would write you an entry for every $1000 we raised, which means that right now I owe you more than 40 blog posts, and I better get on it.

Thanks for everything, please keep helping. I think you’re great.

* a little note about that. Did you know that a very great many (more than a third) of the clients who use PWA are women? HIV/AIDs has always exploited the vulnerable, and these days a client at the agency is just as likely to be a mother with children (sometimes HIV+ as well) as a gay man. The face of this pandemic might not quite be what you think. I’m not just allied to the LGBTQ2S+ community, I’m showing up for those mamas.