We are on Vancouver Island

We took the ferry over to Nanaimo on Wednesday (May 7th) to get ready for our first race at Westwood Lake Nanaimo. I did my whale call on the way over but unfortunately no whales responded. We set up our site at Living Forest Campground. I highly recommend this place: Close to Nanaimo, clean, lots of tall trees (good thing, given its name), located right along the estuary.

Then off to a kick off dinner with family and friends. Thank you, Wendy T, for hosting!  After dinner we went to the Bastion for a photo shoot, The city will be lighting it purple between May 7th and 11th.

Our cake at the BBQ

The bastion lite up for Tri'ing to End ALS

Thursday was beautiful, with a bit of a chilly breeze. Maffeo Sutton Park is along the waterfront and has an amazing backdrop of the harbour, boats, mountains…unfortunately no whales, even though I called them, again. 😊

Mayor Krog presented us with a proclamation claiming May 11th as Tri’ing to End ALS Day in Nanaimo. It was an honour to accept the certification.

Thanks for coming everyone

A few people living with ALS were able to make the trek to Nanaimo; we are honoured that they chose to spend part of their day celebrating our upcoming journey with us. Ian Haywood, ALS Society President, Donald Miyazaki, ALS Society Executive Director, and Dr. Pioro, ALS Society of BC Professor in ALS Research at UBC and lead of PROJECT HOPE, inspired us with their words and support for finding a cure for ALS. Wendy Toyer,  volunteer chair of ALS BC PROJECT HOPE and past Executive Director of the ALS Society of BC, once again arranged for a great send off.

We are both very honoured and humbled by the show of support for our journey. When we started planning this, it was just the two of us on this journey. But we’ve realized that so many folks are coming along with us in spirit, giving us the strength and determination to make this a successful Canada-wide fundraising endeavour.

Our speeches were emotional

The proclamation.

Thank you to Ian, Donald, Mayor Krog, Wendy, Dr. Pioro

And my whale call finally worked! Our daughter took the passenger ferry from Vancouver Thursday night to join us for the weekend and saw two humpback whales, including one that breeched!