Wish Riders

First off, let me say a huge THANK YOU to the Wish Riders and ABC for allowing our family to be part of this project. This weekend was an amazing experience for us all. I just want to get this posted without crying my way through it so for now the highlights. I will go into more details soon.

We met Edgar's brothers of another mother this weekend and it was a truly amazing experience for them all. Joey, survivor of childhood leukemia and Wish Kid. Paul, father to Maddie who passed away from bone cancer. I will go more into their stories later...part of the crying experience.

We arrived in Phoenix on Friday at 1130am. When we arrived at the hotel we had an invitation to a welcome reception at 6pm so since we had time we headed off to the Arizona Bike Week site and met up with the Central Valley Make A Wish crew...Tony, Lori, Shelly and Diana. Miss Sophia got her cute on and once we convinced her to talk louder she sold 5 raffle tickets. I was so proud of her!!! She has to get past that 5 minutes of shyness with anyone new and to have to approach a whole bunch of new people...go Pia. I must say that she melted several hearts even if she didn't sell them a ticket. Pia would jump in front of people and Shelly would reel them in. We took off at about 5pm...at that time there were close to 1000 bikes in the parking lot with more arriving every moment.

The reception was a get to know you session and a briefing of what generally was going to happen for filming over the weekend. It was a crying and bonding session. Sophia met Alyssa, Joey's step-daughter, and they became instant BFFs. The guys also instantly bonded. We Moms bonded over our girls and husbands. It was just an incredible evening. While the guys were going to be busy filming and traveling all over, their women were going to be hanging out. So the girl posse was (Joey's family) April(wife) and Alyssa & Ashland, Sophia and I. It was so nice to have someone to hang with. We went to the Zoo on Saturday and talked about heading over to Bike Week but the guys were determined that their daughters were not to be brought to Bike Week...too many biker babes not wearing enough clothing and too many bikers guys looking scary. They had spent the morning there and gotten an eye full. This would be some of the reason why the biker community is not tapped into like it should be for fundraising purposes. There were sereval local charities at work out there and most had waiting lines. Bikers look scary and the babes might be scantily clad but they have big hearts and pocket books...the Wish Riders want to tap into that for Make A Wish.

The guys were all gone from 8am to 630pm Saturday. They stopped by the hotel to grab some food and overnight gear. They were on the road to the desert by 715pm and arrived at their destination about 11pm. They had to be in place for sunrise filming at 4am. The girls headed to the Arizona Science Museum Sunday and spent the day doing hands on experiments. Everyone got back to the hotel around 530pm. Edgar, Paul and Joey were all sun burned and exhausted. The whole Wish Rider gang went out for dinner that night. It was the first time they had all gotten to sit still in two days but it was well worth it. An amazing few days for everyone involved.

Everyone flew home on Monday afternoon. Paul to Michigan. Joey and family to Texas and us to California. As I said I will post more about the whole weekend and Edgar's Wish Rider experience in a later post. After a full day of work I just want to get Pia ready for bed and fall into it myself.

Much Love,
Roni

P.S. Sophia is heading to camp next weekend. She got in!!!! She is so excited about going.