All Aboard the J Train!

Woo hoo! As promised, here's a picture of the tandem Jerry and I will be riding during next year's NCAC. A member of the Davis Bike Club gave us a really great deal on it once he heard what we were going to be doing with it:

I guess I should also include a picture of Jerry, the other half of the J Train and the guy who'll be riding stoker.  Here's a picture of us on the last day of the 2010 NorCal AIDS Challenge.  I think that's Mindy waving her hand and sprouting out of the top of my head:

For those of you who've never met him, last time I checked Jerry was ranked somewhere in the top 10 of nicest and most generous people in California.  And, ironically, so is Mindy.  I have no idea why I'm in the picture, though.  I have never been able to even break into the top 50.  The best I've ever done was 129th, and that was only after I gave my wheel up to a teammate in the 2009 Winters Road Race and cooked dinner and washed the dishes three times in the same week.

Jerry's been a part of the NCAC since 2007 and has consistently been one of the top, if not THE top, fundraiser for the past three years.  Jerry was too sick from a systemic infection to ride all of his first NCAC and so ended up crewing for three of the four days.  Which was awesome for us because 2007 was the super hot year - the four hottest days of 2007, actually - and we really needed his help out on the road.  He was literally a lifesaver for many cyclists.  Since then Jerry has become an almost-indispensable crewmember.  No joke, he drove over 1000 miles providing SAG (support and gear) for the cyclists in the 2010 NCAC.  I write 'almost' because the crew will have to do without him in 2011 while he's stoking on the J Train.

For those of you who've never done it, stoking on a tandem can really bite.  At its worst, the view never changes, you don't see any of the bumps coming up, you can't look around too much because that throws off the balance of the bike, you never know when the Captain (that's me) is going to be shifting, and you're always pedaling at the Captain's cadence, which is inevitably too fast or too slow.  At its best, the view still never changes.  So we're planning on putting in lots of tandem time between now and then to work out all of the kinks and maximize our chances of still being friends when the ride is all done.

And to help us with that, I'm happy to announce a really cool sponsorship we just received!  Another long-time NCACer has pledged to donate $0.25 for every mile we train on the tandem leading up to the NCAC.  And once we pass 400 training miles she or he will bump it up to $0.50 for every mile.  And to top it all off she's going to donate another $0.10 for every mile of the actual NCAC we complete on the tandem.  How cool is that?!?!

Fundraising Update:
Raised as of 7/10: $2080 or 5.2%
Left to raise: $37920
Click here to donate right now!