We’re off!! I broke my own rule, no crying on RAAM. When the boys rolled out I got all teary eyed, but it was short lived. Had to run back to the vehicles and get ready to leave the start line to meet up with Rick. But wait. What’s that? The follow vehicle won’t start??? No problem, jumper cables and a few minutes of effort and we’re out!

Big huge thanks to Jim from Red Star Energy. He came down to see the start, drop off more Red Star and as he was leaving he thanked me for letting him be a part of Team Beat Cancer. I told him he wouldn’t be thanking me when I called him from Kansas to hit him up for more money for the food budget, and the man not only opened his wallet and gave me everything that he had…he went to the bank to get more and met us on Coast Hwy to hand it off. WE LOVE YOU JIM!!!!!

Rick just called…George has a headache so we have the ibuprofen ready for him. The boys should be on the parade route right now and we’ll Rick at mile 13.1. He should get a little rest before his next pull.

Thanks for checking in! Don’t forget that you can email the racers and crew at teambeatcancer@yahoo.com and we will pass along your messages.

More soon!

~B.

We’re on our way from Poway to Oceanside and it’s 9:18 a.m. Good thing we called an early meeting time! I haven’t had a chance to brief the crew yet, we’ll have to do that in Oceanside.

Thoughts so far…

14 people=lots of stuff.

More soon!

Terry: Wow…there’s a LOT of stuff in here!

Rick: I said no “chick packing” and I put a chick in charge of packing!

Okay, so I might have bought a lot of food at Sam’s Club yesterday. Rick doesn’t understand the need for all of the food, since his plan is to survive on Hammer Nutrition’s products for the entire race and eat no solid food. Yeah, we think he’s nuts too…we’re giving him two days before he starts begging us for food. 🙂 I have 12 crew members and one racer who loves to chew that I need to feed, so I went all out.

We’re currently on our way to gas up the three vehicles and then to Kontron to meet with our crew. Race plan is that both Rick and George will ride the parade zone and then George will take the first pull to Harrah’s. The weather in the desert is looking favorable today!

More updates soon!

I’ll make this one short, it’s time for the last good night of rest before RAAM begins tomorrow. Today we had vehicle/bike inspections, photos, racer interviews and the mandatory meeting with RAAM.

Reggie and I spent the day shopping for food and supplies and the RV is loaded! It should be interesting to see how long the food lasts. The racers are both in bed, thank goodness and I’m headed there myself.

More updates tomorrow. The crew is meeting at 8:00 a.m. and I should have some time to blog once we reach Oceanside.

Thank you for all of your support and keep checking back in!

~Brandy

We are providing you with links to both the Time Stations and a worksheet if you choose to keep track of us and our goals.

Here is the Route with Time Stations from the Race Across AMerica

These are our Time Station goals. Print this out and fill in the blanks —keep track of us you might have fun doing it.

I just spent the last fifteen minutes teaching my daughter Avery, who will turn seven while I am crewing RAAM, how to use yahoo email. I set her up with an email address, carefully wrote the ID and password on a piece of paper, along with my email address and pinned it on the calendar right above the computer. I promised that I would email her from the road whenever I got a chance and that both her and her brothers could send me email anytime that they want to talk to me. This will be the longest stretch of time that I have spent away from my children, ever. Thankfully they will be with their Nana who they are excited to spend time with.

Going through this process with my daughter, it brought my thoughts to all of the people that will be missing us from home while we are on this journey. The people who have made it possible for all of us to participate in Team Beat Cancer. On behalf of the racers and the entire crew, I would like to express heartfelt appreciation to our family and friends at home. We will miss you!

We would like to thank Team VeloSport for their generous donation! Please visit their website www.teamvelosport.com for more information about this Orange County based team and watch for George in his VeloSport gear on RAAM!

In those three vehicles? Hmmm…this should be interesting.

We gathered at Rick’s house today to prep the bikes and vehicles for our inspection which is Monday and more importantly, the 3,043 mile journey that begins on Tuesday. If there was an open storage space in the RV, Camry or follow van, we managed to fill it with water, donated food, medical kits, spare wheelsets and liquid fuel for the riders. It will be a tight squeeze to get the luggage of twelve crew members into the RV, but we’ll manage on Tuesday when everyone arrives.

Dr. John Martinez of Coastal Sports and Wellness briefing the crew on the med kits…

We had some hardworking crew members out there today, who we are truly grateful for. Their commitment doesn’t officially begin until Tuesday, but Jason H., Phil, James V., Will and Jason K. were all there to help out with all that needed to be done.

George isn’t sure what to think of the Compex machine…

Special thanks to Jason H. and James V. who put countless hours into creating signs for our sponsors.

Last but not least, our biggest helper, Alexander!

See additional pictures on our Flickr page!