By: Bronwyn Churcher, 2008 Rider

A lot can happen in 28 days right? Like …I can fundraise $1000 more, get a six-pack and nicely bruised/prepped buns of steel, clock 500km on my new bike and get any flat tires that might happen along the way out of the way, and decide exactly how I’m going to pack all my biking, camping, sleeping and backpacking-for-four-months in Central America gear ALL into a very small bag…Impossible you think? No, not necessarily. You see, I’ve been preparing for this last crunch month for a long time. Since I signed up for the ride in January actually. You see, I’m the queen of procrastination and all along, I’ve planned on leaving everything to the last minute. Including training on my bike…Well I did do a triathlon in March, but I suppose that was March and this is May…

It’s actually all good though- because I’ve discovered a new found love for biking. I’ll admit, for the last four months I have been getting pretty nervous about the actual biking part of the trip. Probably because I was in denial about the fact that it isn’t all downhill to Mexico (north to south = uphill to downhill right?) or maybe I was more in denial about the fact that 3000km is actually a pretty long way. But the facts keep hitting me slap dab in the face everytime someone would ask me ‘So how’s training going? You must be biking a lot everyday hey?’ Well, the fact IS that I live on an island which is extremely hilly and I don’t mean like little hills and dales. I mean mountains. I live beyond the infamous ‘Seven Sister Hills’ (if you’ve ever been to Bowen you’ll have heard of them) and that means that if I want to get any serious mileage, I need to start on lower gradients. Starting small right now means biking from Horseshoe Bay to Vancouver 3 times a week to my yoga class. Start small, think big right? Yes so I had went on this amazing bike ride on Sunday and I just had this great epiphany that biking is the best way to get around EVER. I can see it now…I’m totally gonna turn into one of those obsessed biker chicks by the end of all this.

I’ve got a big fundraiser coming up and something I’ve really learned is that things take a lot longer to organize, publicize and prepare for than you think they ever will. The benefit concert is this Saturday (I’ve been planning for it for over a month now) and I still don’t know exactly who will show up to play and if there’s going to be much to sell at the concession (my oven is only so big people!) But I plan on buying a LOT of boxed wine and getting everyone sufficiently intoxicated and thus it will go down in Island history as a fabulous evening of fun and frivolity, which other than that, no one will remember. Ah, its been done before….But do come out! It’s at the Gallery on Bowen at 7:30 and its going to be pretty epic. I’m even performing with my sister (and training partner) with vocals, violin AND guitar. Uh huh. As I said: epic.

But hopefully it will be my last fundraiser and I’ll reach my goal (if not beyond!). It does hang over your head and make you go a wee bit crazy, hatching random money-making schemes and plugging all of your friends (including the starving student or unemployed former-starving-student ones). And as soon as that’s over I have a month to…well…train I suppose?