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President’s Message Oct 2014

Almost feel panic as every week goes by, as every month goes by.

Almost feel elation as the mental countdown clock tics away towards another Run drawing near.

‘Elation’ as the Mission beckons and ‘Panic’ as I realize the magnitude of what we are about to pull off and I watch all of the flurry of activity going on behind the scenes by Route Coordinators, Road Guard Captains, Advance team Captains, Platoon leadership, state coordinators, fundraising event organizers, Hotel negotiations, meal coordination, gas stop coordination, LEO communication and coordination and rider communications.

“Stoney” (Southern Route RC)”EZ” (Central Route RC) and “Tumbleweed” (Midway Route RC) are marshaling their resources, engaging their leadership teams and orchestrating the beginnings of RFTW 2015. Our Arlington National Cemetery interaction is once again assured for 2015 (thanks “Road King”). The major metropolitan areas we traverse are well into the planning stages and step-by-step choreography (bet you never thought you’d see “Stoney’s” name in the same paragraph with ‘choreography’!).

I am impressed each year by the riders that ‘step-up’ when needed and ‘step-forward’ when asked. Thank you!

Our California launch will take a slightly different turn this year, sort of ‘back to the future’; prior to kicking off out of Rancho Cucamonga (RC) back in 2008, we launched for many years out of Ontario, CA (right next door to RC). Well, as we have experienced over the past few years, we have outgrown the capability of RC hotels to handle such a large group as RFTW.

Our Mission 2015 will once again begin in Ontario, CA- we will have a significantly larger host hotel (with better rates) with adjacent alternative hotels (with better rates). The Radisson Hotel Ontario Airport will be our new host hotel and we have contracts with 4 other hotels all within a click of the host. The Ontario Convention Center and Visitors Bureau will handle all reservations for the 5 contracted hotels all with one single phone number, to be posted.

We will have over 600 parking spaces at our beck and call at The Radisson alone and we will sleep less than 100 yards from the Wednesday morning Kick-off staging area at the Ontario Convention Center, which is three times the size of our staging area these past 7 years. Tuesday night’s RFTW-Kick-off-dinner will be hosted onsite at the Radisson and INSIDE. Even better, the main-drag from KSU on Wednesday morning is a direct merge onto the freeway. FNG’s probably cannot appreciate this yet, but…you will!

Now, the main questions I continually get asked:

  1. Run Hotel lists will not go up until the New Year, the negotiated rates are significant so please don’t try to book outside of the RFTW published window (I know some of you do!) you’ll miss out on significant savings…
  2. RFTW Registration opens at the same time as every year, January 1st — no, we are not behind, it just feels that way since we (all y’all) are ready to roll again the day after we get back!

Support The Mission, Support your Route Coordinator, Take the time to engage others and talk about The Run and if you can, volunteer to be a resource for your Route as well as a Rider for The Mission. Attend any local RFTW rider support groups and encourage our FNG’s.

If you are in Route leadership already, get your RC to post up contact info on the website so that you can be helped!!

All Gave Some, Some Gave All

Wish