Ride Me to the Moon - And A Happy 100 To Us!

So tonight I left school at 4:40 PM and by the time I got 1/4 of the way home it was almost pitch black and I found myself riding to the moon.  Okay, so it wasn't quite like the picture above and I wasn't trying to smuggle a small alien in the basket of my bicycle (extra terrestrial or illegal).  And to be honest, I only went airborne once or twice as I was bumping over potholes in the near pitch blackness (I really need to get a better headlight if I'm going to commute at night).  But as I looked up while heading due East on the way home the vision I saw was more like this;

Now, a little known fact about me and my musical tastes.  At one time in my life I was very into Dinah Washington and I had more than a few of her albums on tape (yes, this was before CD's were popular, back when the walkman was the coolest thing to have) and this was one of the songs I used to listen to a lot:

So this song was playing through my head as I saw myself on a dark ribbon of road punctuated periodically by the headlights of the cars behind and the orange moon stretching just above it.  It was as if I could pedal right to the moon if I kept going!

Now I have to mention here that my association with the moon today started at 2:15 in the morning as Amy and I woke up to watch the first total eclipse of the moon on a Winter Solstice since 1638 and we thought we'd wake up the kids to have them witness it as well - c'mon how often do you get the chance to see that.  I think they've calculated that the next time this will happen is 2094!

So we woke the kids up and this is what we saw:

And it made me so happy that I could share this with my kids, even if I knew we were all going to be loopy and sleep deprived the rest of the day.

But now as I rode home riding to the moon I was grateful to be alive, grateful to be able to just see the moon stretch before me, feel the cold air (it was 21 degrees) and the road under my tires.  And I'm reminded of why I escaped relatively unscathed from my accident.

But there others who can't ride to the moon.  People whose immune systems are compromised and becuase of that they can't be riding outside in the freezing weather, they can't take the chance that they're going to fall in the dark and suffer a severe case of road rash.  People like my friend Dana who needs experimental treatment in order to survive the latest attack from cancer.  The children from Sunrise Day Camp, some of whom I came to find out this past summer, have never ridden a bike themselves because they've never been well enough to learn.  For them time is not always on their side - which is another reason why I want to ride for them this summer.  I can put myself out there and hopefully give them a chance to enjoy a summer playing and running as much as they can.  Now that Allan Rosenburg at Coinland.com has offered to sponsor us again we are $1000 closer to this goal - now we only have $7000 more to go to reach our goal and make this cross country trip a reality to help these kids!

And now for the second part of the title.  WITH THIS POST, CONNOR'S ARMY HAS NOW POSTED 100 TIMES SINCE 2006!!!!!  WOOHOOO!!!!

I think this deserves a bit of a celebration;



Yes, we rock!  And its all thanks to all of you!  Keep spreading the word!  And speaking of rockin' I will leave you with this last little sound bite from Pink Floyd in honor of our lunar eclipse!  Enjoy:

	Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon .mp3
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

Stay well everyone and I'll see you on the road!