We're Linda and Andy Johnson, from Cazenovia, New York. What began as a blog about a bike ride has become a story about our ride through life, trying to overcome a disease that has had a huge impact on us and on many of our friends.

Our journey began in 2007, when Kyle Bryant originated the idea of Ride Ataxia - riding his three-wheeled cycle from San Diego to the annual National Ataxia Foundation meeting in Memphis. It took two months to get there, and in the process he raised $40,000 to fund Ataxia research and he raised awareness of the disease like no one has before. Well he rode to the annual meeting again in 2008 and we joined him! We left from Sacramento and arrived in Las Vegas two weeks and 650 miles later.

You see Linda also has Friedreich's Ataxia. This inherited disease causes the nerves of the body to deteriorate. Linda (and Kyle) can still walk at this point, but it's getting much more difficult. In addition, speech gets slurred, finger dexterity suffers, and other serious complications can develop as time goes on.

The good thing is that research is more promising than ever! Several drugs are going through trials at this time, with other significant research taking place as you read this. There has never been a better time to contribute to this research! Let's cure this disease - for Linda, for the rest of the Ride Ataxia team, and for all of the others afflicted with this disease!

Enjoy our blog! Feel free to write to us any time. Check out the links in the right column below to read more about the disease and our adventures. And if nothing else, be sure to take the seven minutes to watch FARA's video - we couldn't say it better ourselves.

Friday, March 14, 2008

Good to Go!

Andy writes:

We were worried about the bikes, and now they seem to be all set. Of course, if you know me at all, next on the worry-list is the electronics. I think I'm good to go! I now have the map page all set to display our track as we ride. I have a GPS on the bike, so you'll see every move we make, including wrong turns, pit stops, and coffee breaks. I'll only be uploading the data once we get to each destination, so you can't see it in real-time, but you'll at least be able to see how we're doing. Check it out with the "Map of the Trip" link toward the right, or Click Here (you can zoom in to see the details). Anyway, not much to show yet other than our test ride, but you'll get the idea. Time to get some sleep now before the big kick-off in the morning!

Posted at 11:15 PM

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)