We have been very busy the last few days covering as many kms as we could per day and attending to all of the other responsibilities we have.

The brakes on the tow vehicle heated up pretty badly onMonday and we took the Van in for an inspection.

Canadian Tire in Kelowna did the inspection for us and went way out of their way to accomodate our schedule. The service was great and the best part the Manager did not charge us for the inspection.

The good news was that the brakes were ok and the only thing the overheating did was polish the brake rotors to a mirror shine.

The guys have been tearing down the mountains in an almost constant downhill run and the uphills have been fairly sane. Chuck and Less left home without their rain gear on Tuesday June 17 and guess what we got our first real hard rain since we left Vancouver.

It was their own fault they got their as*** wet because by Murwillphy’s law if you forget your rain gear it will rain and come down in buckets. We have all agreed to from now on carry our rain gear and put up with that inconvenience so it wont rain on us again.

We have seen so many amazing things on this trip. Many mountain waterfalls, the multitude of lakes throughout the valley and the beautiful communities we have visited along our way.

We have met with many Mayors and their counter parts and each and everyone of them has treated us well and accepted our challenge to become messengers just like us. The list of messengers is growing and the word has to be spreading like a mountain wildfire.

We have passed through and met with the Mayor or their designates in Princeton, Keremos, Penticton, Kelowna, Vernon and Sicamos.

A special thanks to all of our new messengers from each of these cities.

Princeton Deputy Mayor Maria Sadegur was gracious, genuinely interested and encouraging of our endeavour. Thankyou Maria for your support and we will be looking for you on your return from Ottawa when we pass through Thunderbay.

Walter Despot Mayor of Keremos deserves some kind of medal for comming out to meet us on a Sunday. He is a most genuine gentleman with down home charm and sincerity. We enjoyed our visit to your town, happy gardening and clothes don’t make the man. (That’s the Farmer in me Speaking out). We especially enjoyed knowing that Walter was a retired Pharmacist and had the knowledge to grasp the magnitude of the McMaster discovery. Walter I would like to come through your town again some day and see that Garden you were working on when you so graciously left your work to accomodate us.

Penticton was another wonderful stop and we enjoyed the reception from Mayor Jake Kimberly.

Jake left his council meeting to come out to the Lawn beside the Town Hall to meet with us. We got a good photo opp and had a very good conversation with mayor Jake Kimberly.

Thanks for you ear to hear our message and thanks for your kind words and encouragement.

We were met in Kelowna by Mayor Sharon Sheppard who charmed us all with her sincerity, grace and kind words.

Kelowna is a beautiful City and is busy making everything right for the handicapped. I guess that is why so may retirees move to Kelowna to live on retirement.

Mayor Sheppard had arranged to have other paraplegics and people with disabilities meet with us during our meeting.

We stayed longer than we had planned because of the friendliness  and candor of all who attended. The folks with the chairs pleased us because we were able to talk directly to each of you and give our message of hope for your future. Remember the lab rats are walking again after their severed spinal cords were reattached and regenerated.

With a caring Mayor like Sharon I especially felt peace and happiness because I now know that my brother with his Parkinson’s has a good caring community to live in with good facilities  to accommodate his needs. 

Thank you Kelowna for caring and being a good place to live.

Next we stopped in Vernon and met with Acting Mayor Buffy Baumbrough.

Buffy met us with all of her charm and sincerity. She had already researched our site and was a better messenger than we were for our message. She was well versed on who and what we were and was a gracious host representing her city. She handled her position well and impressed us with her candor and straight way of talking in a down home friendly way.

We all felt welcome and enjoyed our meeting.

I understand that she was standing in for the mayor while he was away. He’d better be careful and not stray too far from the trough lest Buffy takes over the ship. I’m just kidding I think the real Mayor could probable beat her in an arm wrestle but he’d better watch his back lest her charm catch him off guard.

Buffy thanks for your kindness, your grace and sincerity. As I said at our meeting you are a messenger just like us and your voice matched with all ours in unison will help us get the attention we all need to raise the funds we need to complete this research.

God Bless and Thanks

As an aside while in Vernon we had several very special events happen for us. Firstly we stopped at a restaurant called Peppers Grill. When we sat down the owner Tracy Lambeth-Scott came over and said are you the guys crossing Canada in Wheelchairs for Spinal Cord research?

She then told us the dinner was free and that we could have anything on the menu. While we ate she was on the phone calling associates trying to help us out. We couldn’t help but notice that she had assumed the position of messenger even before we offered her a job.

Tracy then told us that we were to eat at her restaurant every day while in the area. We also met the whole great staff at Peppers and the food was outstanding especially that great Strawberry Shortcake. www.peppersgrillevents.com Special thanks to the whole staff Brittany, Jessica, Nicole, Carol, Christine and of Course Sarah. Thanks for making us feel like we were at home. We loved you guys and thanks for becomming messengers, Now get off your butts and get to work spreading the message like the rest of us.

As an aside to our wonderful experience in Vernon our team got to meet your team. That is the wheel chair tennis club. Yea that’s right the wheel chair tennis club. I wouldn’t want to challenge any one of them to tennis. They’d beat me.

Wednesday was a good day for us. We got to rest and met with the Mayor of Sicamous. Mayor Loraine March was one elegant host for our visit.

She asked the right questions, listened with a sympathetic ear and made us feel so at home in her town.

We were excited when she hopped onto one of the bikes for a ride around the parking lot. With a little more practice she could join our team for the rest of our incredible journey. In fact she has and is actually the latest new messenger we have recruited on our journey. Lorraine thanks for the generous donation we received from your town and may god bless your wonderful community.

The press at every stop was interested and considerate in their questions but our guys will answer any in a frank but candid way.

It is late, 12:30 and I’m up again at 6:00 am. I’ll end my blog tonight with this message.

All of our athletes are safe and well. Harvey is itching to get back on the road but not yet as far as we are concerned. If I can find a piece of road that is flat and straight we may let him take a short run by the weekend. Our concern is the immense strain on the arms and hands pumping up the mountains and it won’t hurt the team at all if Harvey takes a few days off even though he has been our anchor and the rock foundation of our journey.

We are now pushing back up into the high mountains of the Canadian divide and the views are spectacular. We will be spending a lot of time driving and backtracking at night for accommodations.

Please stay posted for our posts. I took a spin on one of the bikes today around a large parking lot at our hotel. After my fourth circle around the lot I heard one of them say look at him go. As I passed his position I  yelled how do you stop this thing implying that the only reason I was still moving was I didn’t know how.

The bikes really motor and it is a rush even on a relatively flat parking lot.

I envy the 4 kids in our group that get to go on the ride and Journey of a lifetime.

We have spectacular photos of the entire journey. Mine are at times limited because of all the other duties I have to do loading, unloading tweaking the bikes and getting the athletes off and on the road on time.

We will pool all of our digital photos at the end and save them to a DVD which we will use to post a photo record of our tour.

Take care and thanks for following our journey.

Jim Anderson www.wheeltowalkcanada.org