As I described below, we left the hotel around 0630 and headed over to Fort Totten (sometimes it is hard to know when there is supposed to be an 'r' in words when they aren't actually pronounced, ;) !). At Fort Totten, the FDNY training center, we loaded up some vehicles and got to meet the rest of the riders. From there, we caravaned over to the EMS Station 20 for the Send-Off Ceremonies and Breakfast. The ceremonies included a word from the FDNY EMS Chief and FDNY EMS Chaplan. FDNY EMS recently lost a medic from the post 9/11 medical complications and this year's ride for FDNY was especially dedicated in her memory. Her family was there and her two small children rode with us out of the EMS Station a short distance. After a short breakfast and photo ops, we got on our bikes and rode through Manhatten. We literally rode from the most northern part of the city to the most southern part. Once in the southern part, we arrived at Ground Zero. Unfortunately, we were running late and had a ferry to catch to Staten Island. We were able to spend less than 10 minutes there. The photo we took was across from the site. Riding through Manhatten, especially for our Team, was a priceless experience -- what a rush to ride through Times Square -- the tourists lining the streets watching us and our police escort was amazing! They even took photos -- of us!! The weather had also been in the 60's and rainy the days preceding the ride. We had a bit of a chilly start but once we started riding, I wanted to shed my leg warmers and five layers of jerseys and jackets! It was a beautiful day full of sunshine and rolling hills.
Once at Staten Island, we rode for about another couple of hours where we arrived at another FDNY EMS Station for lunch. All of the squads that host lunch and dinner are all very significant as they have had at least one line of duty death. After lunch, we had to pack our bikes up and head over the Jersey border. Once in Jersey, we drove to a park, unloaded our bikes, and set out for the last portion of the ride into Princeton, NJ. The Jersey leg of the ride today was supposed to be about 32 miles. It ended up being half of that since the support cars and entire Team got seperated and then lost. Eventually we all made it back to the hotel, though!
We unloaded the cars and cleaned up quickly for dinner. A fabulous dinner was hosted by Hillsborough EMS, a small community here in New Jersey. We took several photos there that we will later post.
A really special part of today was having riders from all over the country come up to us and comment on our blog and Eric. Many riders commented on how the blog was a source of inspirtation for them to train and do the ride. That was the best part of today for the Team. We wear our pins everyday -- both on and off the bike. The student team from Minnesota was especially moved and wanted to add a link of our blog to their website where they are posting a movie they are making of the ride.
We thought of everyone tonight at the Awards Ceremony in Austin. I was able to at least give a verbal report of the ride to Jason over the phone. Unfortunately, our photos never made it on time for the actual ceremony. We tried several times to download them today but we not able to get a connection until our stuff arrived at the hotel (much later than we had hoped). Sorry!
Be safe out there, we miss everyone!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment