Final Trip Preparations

Well, tomorrow is bon voyage! The past few days have been a whirlwind of activity buying or borrowing equipment still needed, finalizing plans, and responding to media. I can almost hear the staff at REI and Reno Mountain Sports utter cha-ching! when we pass through their doors.

We had some newspaper and radio coverage the past few days. Today I briefly appeared live (via call-in) on KJFK radio 45 minutes after being asked to do so. I had to quickly find a landline to call from since I was still out tooling about. Thank you to The Executive Center, who also provided our complimentary postal box, for allowing us to dock briefly to use an office phone for this radio appearance.

Mo arrived just before noon, and we have been running errands ever since. We were supposed to go to Incline Village in North Tahoe tonight to stay at a friend’s house to be closer to tomorrow’s launching site, but we still had too much to do. We are going to be very tired for our first day. Mo got up at 2:30 a.m. to catch a taxi to the Philadelphia airport and has jet lag from that and the three-hour time difference. We are both still awake with less than 6 hours until we must get up to head to Tahoe, and I will still be up for several hours finishing various things. The fundraising part of this event has added a “ton” of work to what would otherwise be a vacation that would still require a lot of planning. But it has been a great learning experience and very rewarding.

My webmaster and house sitter Stephanie came by with her boyfriend Dante to get house/cat-sitting instructions, as well as to help me load songs onto my new iPod that I bought for this trip. Thank goodness for young people who tend to be much more technologically savvy than us old fogies (and for their willingness to help us). I don’t plan to listen to much music on this trip unless I need inspiration or Mo starts to get on my nerves. (Mo just read this and said she will now be listening to her iPod the whole time.)

A few recent stories from people who have donated or pledged donations to this cause have really tugged at my heartstrings. Ginny, for example, made her donation in memory of her deceased parents and husband, all big animal lovers. She now cares for some of their pets. The emotion in Ginny’s email exchanges with me surrounding this issue and her gratefulness for having this outlet to honor her three family members is quite apparent, and Ginny has greatly inspired me. The song “You Raise Me Up” by Josh Groban comes to mind.

A friend from New York said at first she couldn’t even read the email I sent about Paddlin’ for Paws. The event struck her so deeply at several levels that it required a few efforts to take it all in. A friend from Indiana said I “rock her world.” As she does mine. She spent her own money and took a week off work to travel south to help canine victims of the Katrina disaster. It’s been an amazing experience to see people’s support and to connect with friends and strangers at a “heart” level.

So, off we go tomorrow. We will be far too fatigued for beginning this type of event. But if we can survive the first day, I think we’ll be okay. My friend Myra, a Reno attorney, will be blogging for me daily starting tomorrow (Wednesday). I will call her each evening from the lake to give a brief report so she can share the highlights of our day with you. Stephanie will check our postal box throughout the week and update the web site so that our donation total will stay current. We hope some friends and strangers will come to meet us during our trip to spur us on.

We will appreciate your well wishes across the week. When we return, we will write our final trip report for the web site.