Live A Big Life Ride

living big to create opportunity

Blog Post

Days 79-81: May 22nd-24th, Avon By The Sea, NJ

Continuing our crawling pace, all we had to do on the morning of the 22nd was bike most of the length of New Jersey to Avon By The Sea, NJ, before taking another few days of rest&relaxation. Back in the early days of college, Madeleine was adopted by the Gallagher family, a most excellent group of people, and they so kindly invited us to celebrate Memorial Day Weekend with their extended family in Avon. We arrived to find a welcome package laid out for us, complete with a chilled bottle of champagne and 4 beers, and before long the whole family has assembled for a weekend of fun.

On Saturday morning I participated in what must have been the most populated event in all of Jersey, the Spring Lake 5 Mile Run. This is exactly what it looked like the entire time:

springlake5

Other highlights included eating taylor ham sandwiches for the first time, sleeping in, having the “best sausage pie in all of North Jersey… all of Jersey… the whole country!”, homemade family fish dinner, hanging out with our new favorite toddlers, and generally getting caught up on what’s been happening in the non bike riding world.

image_1

Our welcome package

 

Days 76-78: May 19th-21st, Rehoboth Beach to Somewhere in South Jersey

We really coasted towards the finish line on this trip, taking at least as many days off as days on in the last couple weeks.

Rehoboth Beach turned out to be exactly as magical as we had hoped, with long, lazy mornings and strolls on the beach, extended happy hours at Dogfish Head and aggressive gym workouts in between (on off days we always find ourselves antsy and itching for physical activity, hence the maniacal decision to workout each day).

photo

Beer-stach

image_1

We found some swings

image_2

Just one big happy family

On the morning of the 21st, after a spirited last night at the brew pub, we moseyed on out of Rehoboth for a short 8 mile ride to Lewes, DE, where we caught the ferry to Cape May, NJ. Delaware is an outstanding state for cycling, just chock full of bike lanes and drivers that respect them. While waiting for the ferry a couple different people approached us and, as always, our favorite of which came back a second time and asked “Can I take a selfie with you guys? It’s my first one, I’ve been reading about them. This way I can tell people I biked across the country.” We happily obliged.

My extended family has been congregating in Stone Harbor, NJ for a week in August for longer than I’ve been alive, so it was very exciting to arrive to the Shore house by bike just a few miles from the Cape May ferry terminal.

image_4

The Shore house

South Jersey was lovely riding – flat and mostly uncrowded – except for a bridge closing that forced us into an irritating detour. We got to our campsite, somewhere in south-mid New Jersey, around 5pm and were immediately swarmed by zillions of mosquitoes. Fortunately the campsite has excellent wireless internet, so we celebrated our last night in our beloved tent by getting in it at 5:30pm and watching 2 feature length movies before going to sleep.

photo

Our final tent site

 

The Finish Line

We finished the Live A Big Life Ride on Sunday, May 25. The total trip took us 82 days, covered at least 4,300 miles, and was the time of our lives.

Check out our Finish Line video HERE! Finish Line video

A million hugs to everyone who cheered, followed and supported us along the way.

IMG_8642

All done!

 

We’re in the Running for $10,000!

KIND Snacks, makers of those tasty granola bars, have a monthly contest of “Kind Causes” and the winner gets $10,o00 for their charitable cause. Pretty cool of KIND, pretty exciting to think that just like that our fundraising could have $10k more than it does now. But it all comes down to voting! So please, take 10 seconds and vote for our Live A Big Life Scholarship cause!

And while you’re at it…

  • Post it on your facebook page and encourage friends to vote as well
  • Ask every member of your office to vote and to share it on their social media
  • Include it in your next email to your family
  • If you’re one of those fancy folk who has a zillion social media followers, make yourself a megaphone for the “get the vote out” message, please?!

To vote, click here!