Half-way to $7,000

Day -70 (Apr 4, 1999)

All training and fund-raising has come to a complete halt during the past week. I'm at home, sick with a bacterial infection, on the edge of contracting bacterial pneumonia, according to Kaiser doctors. I'm not concerned about climbing the Rockies any more, because I've been more focused on climbing out of bed, each morning, to muster up the energy to eat. I'm resting most of the day, although towards the end of the week, I spent a bit of time building this web-site.

On the plus side, my knee has had time to recover and I'm no longer experiencing much pain (though my eyes are sick of watching Oprah and the other bland television shows that are on during the day). Being sick sucks.

Not much pledge money has come in this week, as one might expect. When you're not at work to constantly pester folks about everything having to do with the Big Ride, amazingly, the inflow of funds reduces to a trickle. Okay, I mean stops completely.

I did get a prototype web-site posted to AOL's servers, so I suppose that progress has been made. I wonder how many contributions will be garnered from all of this work? "Build it and they will come," is a quote that comes to mind. Well, it's built! Come on. (Though the web site garnered a strong readership during the ride, only one $20 pledge was made through the online donation form. I've come to realize that fund-raising is not a passive endeavor. Getting people to part with money is about pressing hands, talking it up and (mostly) hounding people. I suppose that a majority of people supported my ride as a tactic to shut me up and allow them to work in peace!)