Sponsor Us

Or, for you Brits logging on, Plaster Sponsor. On our first day of riding on Prince Edward Island in Canada, Gabe took three major falls requiring not only band-aids, but gauze and copious amounts of tape. Hannah fell once the same day. Elisha found himself crushed under my entire load when we crashed in the spoke-breaking incident. And Ezra's mental health requires at least three band-aids a day just to maintain equilibrium. We call those "Psychological Band-aids." Then, of course, there were the three knee braces that Tony, Meg, and I required before the end of the trip at $15 a piece... we're falling apart here! Could you help hold us together with band-aids and boo-boo kisses?

Our kids are munch-a-holics. One of the things they love about riding bikes is how many snacks they get to eat! However, Ezra hates cliff bars. You might have read about that in the Maritime Packet. They would love nothing more than to sample the snack selections of each country we ride through as thoroughly as possible... you could help them out on that quest!

Or another broken bike part! When I dropped my bike and broke a spoke it was a bummer. I had to ride three days with a wobbly wheel before we could get it fixed. Become a Spoke Sponsor and you could help keep us on the road with a new spoke, or brake pads, or chain grease... or any of our other two thousand parts! And, by the way... we carry extra spokes now!

As you know, we home school our kids. Doing this on the road provides some unique challenges. We're going to need books and those books will need to be mailed home when we're done with them. We're going to need notebooks and the usual supplies. We're also going to have to pay for the time in internet cafes as part of the educational process. Become a School Sponsor and you will have made a personal investment in the brain power of our children!

As the Mama of this ravenous herd, may I just say, I get tired of cooking. Lunches within our budget involve bread, cheese, sliced meat, olives, and fruit of some sort, usually eaten on the ground with grubby fingers sticking out of bike gloves. The only things free are the ants. There is something else I get tired of: bread, cheese, sliced meat, and olives with free ants for lunch. I confess to being a hater of all things sandwich, and yet, here we are, picnicking every day. I am just living to get to Greece & Turkey where we can add chickpea and lentil spreads to our lunch diets. If you have any love for the mother of the many children whose hilarious antics make you laugh, BUY HER LUNCH OUT.

We've budgeted for the big museums we KNOW we want to see... what we're afraid of is all of the museums that are out there that we don't know about that we REALLY want to see... but museum admission times six ain't cheap! Without your help we'll have to ride by most of them. Just think... you could be responsible for our children seeing the original helmet of the Prince of Albania in Vienna, Austria at a museum we'd love to attend which just didn't make the budgetary cut!

Of course we love cycling, we're cycling for a lifestyle... but that doesn't mean our little knees don't get tired! And, it doesn't mean that we don't sometimes get rained out for days at a time and find ourselves a depressing number of miles from where we want to be. Since hitch-hiking with six bikes, twenty bags, a guitar, a violin, four kids, six helmets, and a partridge in a pear tree doesn't seem like a viable option, how 'bout sponsoring a train ride? Of course we'll need six tickets... but maybe you could buy us just one? We already know that to train over the Alps (don't even START on us about REAL cyclists riding over the Alps unless a) you've already done it with four kids and the above baggage, or b) you are going to fly over and help push us uphill) will be several hundred dollars... and that still leaves us with the train trip over the Pyrenees...

Have I mentioned that I get tired of cooking? Let me give you a window into our dinner time world: Imagine getting off of the bike having ridden forty or so miles with every thirty seconds punctuated by Ezra's request for tree identification, poetry recitation, word definition, math fact verification, song accompaniment, etc. The bags must be unloaded. The tents must be set up. Six Therma-rests inflated, six sleeping bags deployed, a clothesline hung, water procured and, oh yes, dinner prepared. What's for dinner? Tonight? Uncle Ed's Pork Chops, rice, salad, and veggie sticks... raw because we have only two pots. I dig out and set up the two Primus stoves, chase down a child who can carry water while I put together the plates and cups and bowls... did I mention that our table service is origami? It folds flat, which is perfect for traveling, but it means assembling eighteen pieces just to get started! I'm chopping the pork into tiny cubes and boiling water for the rice, whilst swatting away the local insects who've discovered we're here. I walk fifty feet to the water source to wash the cutting board before starting in on the salad and veggie sticks. Still swatting. Dressing for the salad? A lemon or lime, maybe an orange, squeezed over the greens with some seasoned salt. We finally sit to eat. Still swatting. When dinner is over, the kids and I hike all 18 pieces of tableware, plus silverware and pots the fifty feet to the water source to unfold and wash it all, only to refold it all for breakfast the next morning. Still swatting. It's labor intensive. Six days a week, we don't mind at all... but didn't God create that seventh day to rest? I won't even tell you about the time we did all of the above in a DOWNPOUR on a logging road, with NO water source, cooking 100 yards from the tent because we were in bear country. What's that you say? Would I like you to take us to dinner? How kind of you to offer, we'd love it!

If you can be an NPR day sponsor, why not an Edventure Project Day Sponsor? Where will we spend your day? Just imagine the possibilities... it might be in London, touring a museum. Or maybe it will be spent rolling along Hadrian's wall, the northernmost extent of the ancient Roman Empire. It might be in Istanbul, watching whirling dervishes. It might be camped next to a storybook castle on an idyllic lake on the border of the Czech Republic. It might be cheering on the most outlandishly dressed camel jockey at the Festival of the Sahara in Douz, Tunisia. It might be covering our noses and gagging at the smell as we tour the tanneries of Morocco. Maybe it will be touring the ancient cave paintings in southern France, or walking the beaches of Normandy, or waving at you really hard from the observation deck of the Eiffel Tower, or floating the canals of Venice in a gondola, or maybe we'll say "Hi" to the Pope for you when we visit him at the Vatican. Who knows? You will if you become a Day Sponsor. What better gift is therethan the gift of a day?

One area of our budget that we already know is sorely lacking is the hotel section. Sometimes, we want to sleep indoors. Sometimes, we want more than three quarters of an inch between us, and terra firma. Sometimes, we don't want to have to walk more than 10 feet to the bathroom, and we'd like to walk that ten feet in the middle of the night without having to put our shoes on. Sometimes, we want to leave the tents in their bags, sleep on sheets and estimate the time we wake up using a digital clock that is bed-side instead of guesstimating by the temperature inside the tent and how much condensation is hanging on the exterior. Even crazy people like us enjoy a real bathtub once in a while (especially the Mama!) Hotels in Europe are not designed for families with four kids. Anywhere we want to stay we'll need two rooms; which makes it less likely that we'll be able to stay on our usual daily budget. The place we blow our budget most when we travel is on even ONE night in a hotel. Sponsor a hotel night for us and we'll sleep soundly and dream of you!

Want to see us but don't want to fly to some hole in the wall, mostly third world, used to be eastern block country? Worried about how you'll read the airport signs in Arabic? Me too. At the end of this great adventure we have to get home somehow. We've considered rigging our bikes to a raft and cycling the Atlantic, but it just doesn't seem viable somehow. If you really wanted to, you could help fly us home! We've budgeted for the return trip in 2009, but we'd love to make a mid-trip visit to friends and family. Without several Flight Home Sponsors this will be, simply, impossible.

We plan to be gone for fifteen months, that is approximately sixty weeks. We've saved the money for most of those weeks ahead of time... but not all of them! We're hoping that by sharing our trip through the Edventure Project we'll be able to fund what's left. Feeling generous? (Or maybe just crazy!) Sponsor a whole week! Go ahead, you can do it! It's just one little click away! If you are enthusiastic enough about this project to sponsor a whole week then you're OUR kind of traveling buddy. You'll hear from us in person and we'll do something VERY special for you in return. Want to know what? You'll have to take the plunge to find out!

We have a goal for our bikes: to fly beneath the radar. We want them to be sufficiently non-descript that they aren't stolen in Amsterdam (which is a distinct possibility from what we hear!) So far, so good, on that front. They are definitely non-descript: blue, dented, still bearing the tag from the rental shop on Martha's Vineyard where we bought them cheap at the end of the season last year... which makes them look like WE stole them. Just the look we're hoping for. However, we have another goal for our bikes: to be tough enough to make it through the trip. On that front, we're not sure we're doing as well. Tony's definitely doesn't fit him right. These bike are low end in terms of component quality and design. Our big goal before we leave is to be able to upgrade at least the two adult bikes. Did your great aunt just die and leave you with a crazy amount of money that you just CAN'T figure out how to spend? Does the idea of us wobbling down the Adriatic Coast on jive, patched together, second-hand cycles keep you up at night? Make an investment that we will thank you for with every push of the pedal: a new bike... or two.