Backstory:
I'm a pretty normal Dad with a couple kids. the kids are pretty cool though. One of them, my eldest son, is an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) kid. He bounces in and out of treatment centres and therapies and has a hard time at school. He's a great guy one on one, but in a crowd or around other people, James falls apart. He is not a model child by society's standards.
As our summer vacation was winding down last year, I asked James what he thought would be a fun thing to do with just the two of us, and he mentioned a park in Ottawa that he had seen a TV program about, and how it would be fun to go there to play. Since Ottawa is about 500 km from home, my mind turned to hotels and highways... but he wasn't done. He wanted to ride his bike there.
Now most 9 yr old kids wouldn't come to their dad with a proposal to ride their bike across the province to play on a swing set, but in James' mind this was perfectly reasonable. And my mind went straight to all the times he hears "you can't" - both at home and at school. So I didn't say that. In fact I was very careful with what I said next. What I said was... "If you can ride your bike from our house to the CN Tower in Toronto, then we'll figure out how to ride to Ottawa." Since its about 70 km to the CN tower from here, and James has a crappy Schwinn on 20" tires, I figured I was safe. No way the kid could get that far on that bike.
And so, three weeks later we rode our bikes to Ottawa.
A fellow mustachian suggested that we set up a GoFundMe account before heading off, and maybe we could think of a local charity that would benefit from the ride - and I shrugged it off. But then I mentioned the idea to a few other people and they all agreed, so one night before we left I set up an account, naming the treatment centre James attends as beneficiary of our ride. I wasn't sure how much to put in the goal amount. If we did this, I wanted the ride to be a success and I didn't want James to feel bad about missing a money goal I had tagged on.
Since it was Canada's 150th birthday (I'd say sesquicentennial, but I can't spell it) I set the goal at $1500 and crossed my fingers that we'd make it. Then I called a DJ at our local radio station and asked him please to announce the thing on the air and get us rolling.
Within 3 days we had raised our goal amount. By the end of the week we had doubled it. We rode to Ottawa and picked up media attention in every town we came to. Once the ride was done, we had been on national news, a dozen local papers, had scout troops meeting us on the road, and felt like celebrities. Icing on the cake came when the prime minister of Canada tweeted his congratulations to James personally. Wow.
After the ride we came home and presented our treatment centre with a big fat cheque for $10,800. Not bad at all. The press came out and one reporter hounded me for an answer of what we were going to do next. I answered that I was happy our ride had been such a success, and we could return to school. He asked again... "What's next?" I talked about all the things that the treatment centre could do with these donations and how great it was that so many people had learned about ASD through our ride, and that we were completely pleased with all the support... and again he asked, "What's next?"
I never answered him, but through this thread, I'm going to share with you - and enlist your help so that "what's next" is answered, and hopefully, so that you'll be part of the 500 more kms we are riding this year.