Charity Challenge update: Let’s get to work!

As you all know, we’re in a friendly little competition with our blog mates over at Cartilage Free Captain - whoever raises the most money for their charity between now and Wednesday gets the keys to the other blog’s site for a day.

Our charity this year is the National MS Society, and specifically my annual Bike MS ride. The ride itself was this past weekend, so I wanted to give a bit of a recap of the weekend, and then we’ll talk about money again.

To talk about this year’s ride, I first have to mention last year’s. Last summer was an extraordinarily hot summer by Oregon standards - we’re a state that typically stays in the high 80’s most of the summer, with a two week spike into the 90’s or low 100’s in late August. But last summer was 90 degrees almost every day, and the weekend of the bike ride was one of the hottest days of the year - 105 degrees. I only rode 40 miles last year because I don’t enjoy heat stroke.

In contrast, this weekend was absolutely glorious - I was legitimately cold at the 7.30 start of the ride, and the high temp for the day was a balmy 82 degrees. The only bad part of the day was the tradeoff we made for the weather, that being the headwinds that pushed against us in seemingly every direction, no matter where we turned.

But even with those headwinds, it was a beautiful day and a really fun ride - the ride itself was amazing, and seeing people you only really see once a year is a lot of fun too. One of the best parts of the whole weekend is the Sunday morning “Victory Lap” - people living with MS who are able to bike do a one-mile loop around the town where the ride is based, in celebration of their strength and guts and awesomeness, and everyone else on the ride who wants to be part of it forms a massive cheering section for them at the start/finish. It’s an amazing thing to be part of, and it really helps reinforce to me why I do the ride and raise the money - for those folks.

AAAAAAAAAAND, SPEAKING OF RAISING MONEY.......

We’ve got some work to do.

As of right now, 8ish AM on 8/8, CFC’s fundraiser for Noah’s Ark is at $1,215, not counting any mailed-in pledges they may be waiting on. The Short Fuse is sitting at $1,067, so there’s a gap there we need to start minding.

If you’ve already given, thank you so much! You’re great! If you haven’t been able to give yet, you’re still great! You’re amazing! And your support over the next two days will vault TSF over CFC in blog/fundraising terms as much as Arsenal vaulted over Tottenham at the very end of last season!

CLICK HERE TO DONATE TO THE SHORT FUSE’S CHARITY CHALLENGE!

Also: tell all your Arsenal-supporting family and friends! Any time you talk about Arsenal in the next 48 hours, talk about our Charity Challenge, and tell people that we have a job to do.

Thank you all so much, from The Short Fuse, on behalf of those living with MS, and from me. This has been an amazing week, and you’re all a big part of why. Let’s end the week where we started it - above Tottenham, as it should be.