the white death has arrived.

What to do with myself when the white death ruins my plans of learning to drive a manual transmission car? Obviously rather than spend hours on the phone begging people in random towns across the country to let a group of 25 young adults sleep on the floor of just about anywhere they're willing to offer I figured creating a little blog for the ride was a much more worthwhile use of my time (and it'll provide me with a little break from denials and unreturned emails and phone calls...sigh). I may not be as eloquent and humorous in my writing as my landlord (a.k.a. uncle Howie) and cousin Shane, but I thought I would at least give it a shot so I would have some documentation of my fast approaching trip from San Diego, CA to Washington, D.C. on my amazing new bicycle Bruno.

I consider my first trip cross country by bike to be among the top 5 experiences of my life so far. So here I am gearing up to do it one more time with a different group and for a different and equally incredible cause. In the next 7 weeks as the ride quickly approaches I have lots of planning to finalize and a few other adventures ahead of me. We have about half the hosts for the route secured so before the end of the month that will need to be finished, wish me luck!

Also, next week I'll be boarding a plane on my way to Haiti. Since starting medical school my family friend and one of my mentors has gone on a medical mission trip to Haiti in February. I have wanted to join him each year, but with the busy medical school schedule I haven't been able to make it happen until now. Even before entering medical school I had an interest in international work of some kind, and once I've completed my medical training I'll be able to provide care in underserved communities around the world. It's something I'm really looking forward to, and I hope to learn ways to do that both on my trip to Haiti and as I travel cross country teaching others about global health issues.

I'll return from Haiti for a week of lots of phone calls and begging for hosts along the route, once that's finished (and it will be by Feb 28th) all that will remain is mapping out the specific roads from town to town and probably a bit more fundraising, oh and my very LAST rotation of medical school! Then it's off to San Diego on March 27th.

So now I have a blog, but unfortunately I'm no better at driving a manual transmission car. When I return from Haiti in two weeks I'll likely be getting well acquainted with my bicycle a little sooner than I had planned since there will no longer be an automatic transmission car in my life...oh well.

You can help support my ride and our amazing beneficiaries by clicking this link