Good heavens. Some people just can’t sit still for 5 seconds. Give them a day off from graduate school and the next thing you know they’ve organized a ginormous bike-a-thon in your honor. You know what I mean?
My fantastic sister has decided that it’s making her crazy over there in Carbondale, Illinois, not being able to take some sort of immediate action on our behalf. So, being a can-do sort of person, she has decided to occupy herself (and a good number of her friends, it sounds like) with a grand bike-a-thon to help us raise funds for popsicles, alternative therapies, baby hippos – all the things we’re going to need but weren’t in the budget this year. What a goddess.
She’s calling it the “Valerie Garrison bike in the heat of summer with inadequate training uphill the whole way bike-a-thon.” Catchy, no? The acronym is VGBITHSWITUTWW B-a-T, which, as she acknowledges, is not pithy but fun to say. She is planning to bike from Carbondale, where she lives, to Cairo (pronounced in Illinois as though it rhymed with day-glo), 53.3 miles away. She says, “I was going to have it be some sort of big surprise and all, because that is what I usually do, but I figured you could use an upper. That, and if I keel over on the trip you will know why. Luckily the administrative assistant at school lives at about the halfway point and she has offered to stand in her lawn and hose me off as I bike by.”
And of course there are t-shirts. The t-shirts are my favorite part of the whole thing, really completely inspired. They involve a reference to (one could even say a wholesale unauthorized borrowing from) one of our favorite series of children’s books, Toot & Puddle, by Holly Hobbie (no kidding). Toot and Puddle are a pair of pigs who have set up housekeeping together in a charming watercolored bungalow in Woodcock Pocket. They are quirky and extremely endearing. And there have been a long series of jokes and associations over the years whereby I am associated with Toot (who loves spontaneous travel and occasionally gets a bit moody) and Valerie with Puddle (who wears stripy turtlenecks and generally prefers the comforts of home).
Check it out:
Abby’s plan is to sell the t-shirts for $15 to anyone who wants one (don’t know yet how she plans to handle shipping & handling & the licking of stamps). All proceeds go to the VGBITHSWITUTWW B-a-T fund.
If you’d like to pledge, or buy a t-shirt, or get a copy of the pledge form to use, you are invited to email Abby at agitlitz@hotmail.com.
She says, “Ask people to spread the word. If interested, they can take the pledge sheets* to work, or bike their own bike-a-thon.” Or, you know, take the idea and run with it however you like! Or just enjoy it from the sidelines, like we are.**
And make sure to check out a Toot & Puddle book from your local lending library.
Deborah
* Click here for the pledge sheet. Or go ahead and email Abby if you’d like a copy.
** p.s. Abby says the date for her bike-a-thon is Sunday, June 29th.
when is this bike-a-thon taking place? i would like to volunteer my little brother to accompany abby on her journey.
Ah yes! Abby says it will be Sunday, June 29th!