T minus 1 and counting

Tomorrow is the Ann ride, so today is filled with trying to make sure that all the details are done, hoping that we get more registrations, and a bit of an ache inside.
I always miss Ann, and a day never goes by when I don't remember her, especially when I swing my leg over a bike. Doing this ride is a tribute to her, and to her respected place within Walla Walla and the cycling community in particular.
Because she taught at Garrison Middle School for 17 years, there are many people in town who remember her fondly, both former students and parents. Since she was fluent in Spanish from her years in the Peace Corps in Paraguay, she always taught at least one class for second language learners. Part of our closeness was our common experience in living in the Third World, as well as my years at WWCC teaching English as a Second Language to adults.
We both came to cycling later in life than we would have liked, and bemoaned the fact that we were just old enough to miss Title IX and its positive effect on women's sports.
We tried to make up for lost time, though. We once figured that we had ridden the equivalent of around the earth at the equator together. There wasn't the larger cycling community in Walla Walla then, and the group rides were small and didn't even ride all year round together. So, the calls went out each week, where should we ride on Sunday? Can you ride Tuesday evening? What bike tour can we do this year?
And then there was coffee together, when weather or schedules precluded biking. Coffee, and lots of it.
Our birthdays were a few days apart in October, and I never failed to mention at birthday time that she was older. By not quite a year. The fall before she died she turned 50. I had been trying to find the perfect 50th birthday commemorative joke for months. One day I was driving down Tietan towards Safeway when I spotted a yard sale. There stood the perfect 50th birthday gift. We had talked about how when we were young the "exercise" rage for women our mother's age was a machine with a motor and a belt which you placed around your middle. You turned the motor on, and it was supposed to "shake" the fat off.
There it was - one of the ancient fat shakers (I know there's a name for it, but it escapes me at present). At $20 it was a bargain. It weighed a ton - all steel. I had to get Jim to come pick it up with the Suburban, because there was no way that I could lift it up.
A call to her principal got permission for us to place this in the teacher's lounge the evening before her 50th. We put it there with one of the styrofoam "50th birthday" tombstone pieces, with her name poked into the foam.



The next day I waited for a telephone call. None came. Fearing that I had overstepped the bounds, I dropped by her house on the way home. I walked in and was met with laughter. She related that she had come around the "L" shaped section of the teacher's lounge, and heard other teachers laughing. When she saw what it was, she just about fell over. She loved it.
Eventually, she gave it to one of the janitors, who said that using it (yes, it still worked), helped his bad back.
I felt bad about the styrofoam tombstone when she was killed 7 months later, but Jim gently reminded me that Ann had a great deal of enjoyment out of the gag, and that's the way that it should be remembered. So, it is.
So, ride on Ann, and may the wind be always at your back.