It's Time

Four days, 8 hours, 12 minutes, 34 seconds. Not long now until we start The Ride to Cure Diabetes on Saturday morning in Sonoma County. We are making final preparations before flying out on Thursday morning and are anxiously awaiting what has been a long time coming, 102 miles!

Jessica and I started talking about doing this event long ago but it wasn't until February of this year when we decided to take the plunge. Without the encouragement of Jessica to do this thing....we wouldn't be here today!

As JDRF often says "we're in the business of putting ourselves out of business." Hopefully we have been able to help JDRF meet their goal over the last 5 months as we have trained and fundraised for this important goal of finding a cure to diabetes.

It has not been an easy road as we have certainly encountered it all....rain, snow, extreme hot and extreme cold (sometimes in the same day!), snakes, owls, wild dogs, and cows, just to name a few. If it lives or happens in the wild of East Tennessee, we have probably encountered it.

We fly out on Thursday morning at 7am, connect in Memphis, and then arrive in San Fransisco around noon. We'll pickup our rental car, find a good spot to hit up for lunch, and then head 50 miles north of the city to Santa Rosa. JDRF has events planned for each day of the weekend and I will try to update the blog as often as possible throughout the weekend. I also hope to post a picture or two to help you share in our experience. In addition, I will "tweet" as much as possible and you can follow us on facebook or on Twitter (aashafer).

I can't say it enough....Thank You for supporting our journey! It has been a fun ride but the big one is now upon us. We hope to bring some great memories home and hopefully a cure will not be far behind. I do just want to mention one more time why we are doing what we are doing. When I was diagnosed almost 11 years ago now, I was told by the doctors that it was likely that we would have a cure within 10 years. Obviously a decade has passed since the 23rd day in October, 1998, and we do not have a cure. It's time for progress. We are...The Shafer Ten Year Team.