shadon "I can't comment on the incredible-ness of the experience, since I'm traiing for my first ALC, but the whole thing has been great so far!"

the incredibleness is...incredible, you are in for a heck-of-a-ride. Just ride/eat/sleep....oh and work and surf TE.

I did more follow up last year, that is folks who say "yeah, I want to sponsor you", if I don't see them show up as sponsors in a month or two sent another letter, e-mail out.

Voila, usually twice is a charm.

I make my sponsors feel like they are on the ride as much as possible, without all the training and gatorade and stuff.

I did a group voicemail each day from both rides to all the sponsors with voicemail, I kept an online journal, not a blog but I'm still working on it...make sure you thank your sponsors, send thank you cards (that's tax deductable).

The folks who don't ride may be fascinated by what goes in to acheiving your goal, most knew that you'd have to keep hydrated and fed, but had no idea how you do that on a long ride.

I made it a "tradition" last year to do the voicemail from Rest Stop 4, with the music in the background, Dolly Parton, Sound of Music, Swan Lake, I forget what they played when they were the Secret Service...

Lastly you never know who is effected by the cause you are volunteering for. Till I did BATO I did not know that the wife of one of my co-workers is a cancer survivor, or that Doreen one of our managers lost her brother in law to AIDS. Yesterday I was talking to a customer at work, I'm not sure how we got on the subject but he told me he used to ride and now his MS has progressed to where he can't, I told him about team AV and there we are, he's just calling the phone company and both of us tearing up....

Doreen's big burly bearded husband wears the ALC ride bracelet I gave them, well he can't get it around his wrist so I hear it's on his coffee cup ;-)

To Doreen and her husband I got the feeling that for them the fact that 2,000 people on this ride alone are willing to do this is like he has not been forgotten. It's like a rolling memorial.