FRIDAY STORY: RIDE FOR MOBILITY EDITION
a
Greetings from the road!

Below is a sample of what I have been reading these past weeks, billboards along the road:

Pigs and Fresh Pork
Pick up Bed Covers Cheap – Exit 15
Karaoke – 4 nights a week
Old Fashioned Sodas, only 5 miles ahead
Funerals by Paul – The best way to go

These one-line stories help me through the day. They are always short, easy to grasp, sometimes humorous, sometimes sad. Some make me hungry. Some make me wonder.

As I write this I sit inside our moving billboard. Our one line story is unique:

“Transforming Lives through the gift of Mobility” = $44.40

I wonder what people think when they see us out in the road or parked at Mother’s Diner (the only restaurant within 40 miles), dressed in canary colors, sweating, and riding bicycles. I bet the story of our sighting is odd enough to repeat. I estimate that each day in the country hundreds of people notice us on the road, more notice us during our stops, and we talk to around 30 people and hand out literature to ten people. In the cities it could be ten times this, and when we do secure media coverage, many times more (millions for our CBS Morning Show).

Today I faced 25 mile per hour head winds, and I rode through two rain storms. Farm windmills turned so fast I could not see the blades. At times it seemed like the wind was going to push me backwards.  Is our effort worth the reward?  If all we wanted to do was place 100,000 wheelchairs a year, we’d be better off staying home and focusing on Orange County, California.  But that is not us.  We need to get to 1,000,000 wheelchairs a year, and then, more.  For that, we need Kansas. We need Pennsylvania.  We need Illinois and Missouri.  We need people in America to talk about these guys riding bicycles for people who cannot walk.  They call themselves “Free Wheelchair Mission”.

Lord, if this is what it takes, riding against the wind in the rain and up hills is a small price to pay for people who cannot. ~ Don