S.K.R.A.A.M is Born

Feels like I'm rushing to get this up. Probably because I am. My ToDo list has become gargantuan and while this blog feels non-priority I'd say it's a big mistake to think that. Recording this has to be priority number up there, both for posterity and for organizational reasons.

So, from the beginning. How did this start?

Reader's Digest Version - I promised myself a long time ago that if Rent-A-Goalie - a television show that I work on - became a thing, and I gained any sort of purchase on celebrity influence, that I would work hard to wield it for good stuff. My brother's death at Sick Kids and the more recent birth of my son - he is healthy but you never know - gives the Hospital a big place in my heart. Kids are where it's at - potential, future, innocence, helplessness, fight fight fight. Giving my son the tools and the room to do what he has to do is my parenting philosophy - this translates to a grander scale approach at the hospital. I'd like to do my bit.

So...the show's a hit and I get my right arm guy - Baby Z - to try and get me in at The Foundation - the charitable wing of the hospital. It's a slow grinding process.

Cut to: Bell Celebrity Ball. I get a last minute invitation. My mentor, Al Magee, attends with his lovely wife Mel and they happen to be sitting beside Michael O'Mahoney, President of the Sick Kids Foundation. Introductions all around. I tell Michael the story of my brother and then get it in my head to tell him of this idea - only I make it sound like more than an idea. I make it sound like a concrete plan. Mr. O'Mahoney, I say, I want to participate in RAAM - Race Across AMerica - to raise funds for the Hospital For Sick Kids. I bring him up to speed on RAAM, building it up with the story of my buddy Kevin Wallace who has raised over 3 million dollars for a Breast Cancer Facility - built in his mother's name - at the Trillium Centre. I tell Mr. O'Mahoney that I'd like to do the same for Sick Kids. It is my intention to integrate my job with my passions with my life with my cause. Multi-platform life-living where everything is to everything else's benefit.

Mr. O'Mahoney loves it. Now, in hindsight, let me say that it is Mr. O'Mahoney's job to love something like this. I think, though, that it's safe to say that the Foundation receives thousands of these cockamamie ideas daily. How many come to fruition? Probably not many.

I leave the Ball excited nonetheless.

Then the signs started popping up and the train gains steam and before I know it I'm up to my eyeballs.

A few days after the Bell Ball I find myself on Front Street. I never go to Front Street. A guy parks illegally by the fire hydrant in front of me. This is notable because there was no parking on the street - the only way he could have parked anywhere near me was to do so illegally. This man's name was Paul and his car was emblazoned with the stickers of bike-related companies - the most prominent being Blue Bikes. He tells me he's here to deliver a bike to a lawyer who likes to ride. I ask him if his company likes to sponsor teams riding in RAAM for Sick Kids Hospital. He gives me his card and says let's talk about it.

Then the lawyer walks towards us and I almost fall off my feet. Seriously. I am in full overblown, overwrought reaction to a man walking towards us.

Why?

Flashback to Tour For Kids this past August. There's this guy riding the ride who crashes on the first day. He bows out of riding in any group - simply does all 800 km on his own. He is like a ghost for those four days - riding along unbowed by anything. I don't know his name or his story but he is in my peripheral vision throughout. At the farewell picnic I approach him and his lovely girlfriend and say that I don't know what it is but I think I should have your number. We need to at least make that connection. This guy's name was Sam Babe. (I am going to post my Day One Journal from the Tour For Kids in case none of you believe me. So genuine was this non-meeting/meta meeting that I call him Sam Bake, not Babe, in the journal.)

We didn't make contact post-ride but when I started thinking about doing RAAM I started thinking about Sam. I knew it was he whom I wanted to ride it with.

And when I put it to the gods as an idea the gods have Sam Babe walk up to me on a street in a part of town I never go to.

In front of a guy peddling bikes out of the back of his car.

Sam, I ask, feel like doing RAAM with me next year to raise money for Sick Kids Hospital?

He gives the only answer I may have been comfortable with at that moment and easily the scariest one I could possibly think of - I don't need to think about it, sorry what's your name again...right, Christopher. I don't even need to think about it.

Yes.

Why didn't he have to think about it? How do you commit to an excrutiatingly tough mental, physical, spiritual experience without giving it a moment's thought?

Because you've already gone through one and come out the other side.

Sam Babe is an A.L.L. (Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia) Survivor. I found out his story later. Same disease that took my brother nearly 40 years ago.

So...as a way of explaining what happens next and for a brief description of RAAM I will post a letter I sent to my mentor Al shortly after that. Al's son was diagnosed with A.L.L. at the age of 4. His son is now 9 due in part to the awesomeness of Sick Kids Hospital. I'll post that letter separately.

Before I do that understand that, at this point in the process, the whole thing is nothing but a dream, an idea. RAAM itself is an abstract concept, as is working for the hospital. Even A.L.L. I know very little about. There is a desire and a possible adventure hovering about but that's all it is - possibility, potential, and a few big signs - billboards actually - to follow this one through.

But I've never been a follow-througher. I've always been an ideas guy.