Grand Island

Sorry again for the delay in posting. But I'll try to catch up here.

About midway through Nebraska is Grand Island. At about 50,000 people it's the third largest city in the state after Omaha and Lincoln. It's also legendary on JOH because of the Grand Island Ladies (GILs): Sue, Tammy, and Andrea. The GILs all have or have had at least one child with a disability. They were first introduced to JOH about 17 years ago and for the past seven or nine years have been planning and sponsoring two days. They are also all three amazing when you see what they do for people with disabilities in their community and for JOH.

We did an arrival at the Holiday Inn where they put us up and they had decent size contingent to welcome us. It was a short 50 mile ride and after four grueling days prior we were pushing it pretty hard just to get it done with cruising above 20 mph most of the way and about 25 mph the last five miles. The ride itself was uneventful: flat with no serious headwinds, just lots more corn. I feel bad though because I caused Dave to crash when I was in front and slowed down without enough warning, but fortunately he landed in the grass with no damage to himself or the bike.

At the arrival the local news showed up and I did an interview so Joe and I were on TV later that night. That was kind of cool because I think it was the first time I've been on TV. After the arrival we had lunch at Tammy's house and she served us steak, which was a treat. At the lunch I also met Nia who has been coming to visit with JOH teams for about a decade or more, which is really cool.

After lunch we went to St. Francis Medical Center to visit Milly, one of Sue's foster children. Milly is 14 months old and has severely underdeveloped lungs as well as other developmental problems. She was going to Omaha the next day for an operation and so we went to wish her well. She was a beautiful little girl, although she was really small for her age. And she had IVs and tubes that basically kept her alive. I got to hold her, which at first was a little nerve-racking because of all the tubes. But it was really cool.

That night we went to a dinner and dance at the Elks Club sponsored by the Arc of Grand Island. It was cool because all the participants were a lot of fun. I got to meet Andrea's daughter Mallory who is 23 and very low functioning. She's non-verbal, but was pretty cool. What's kind of scary is that Mallory is undiagnosed - in other words they don't know what happened.

The following morning we visited with some kids who were at a summer school for kids with disabilities and then visited the Ashley Park Barrier-Free Playground. The GILs planned and fundraised for the playground and Push America helped install the equipment. Plus the owner of the company that did the mat under the equipment was a PiKapp and did one of the tiles with the Push America logo. It was a lot of fun because we played with another group of summer school kids with special needs.

After a little free time we finished with a picnic back at the playground, which was cool because all the GILs and the folks from the other visits were there too. Also they really loved it when we did our Kids on the Block puppet show, which capped off an awesome couple days in Grand Island.