RAAM RED!

So the reason it’s been so long since my last blog post is because I’ve been busy Racing Across AMerica! I was recently a member of an 8-person bike team called Team Life Changers (www.teamlifechangers.org). I’ve done our bike logo on my head before:

We raced our bikes 2989.5 miles from Oceanside, CA to Annapolis, MD. Our team colors were red and black, so I figured a red mohawk was in order. The day before the race, I put on some red gel and one of the only red shirts I own, compliments of CLIF bar:

6/17/11

Then we went down to Oceanside and had everything inspected. Here I am, hoping that I put my helmet stickers on correctly:

Pretty soon, it was picture time! Getting ready:

Here’s our awesome team – father/daughter (youngest at 15yo), father (his daughter was our assistant chef), father/son (second youngest at 14yo, father represented in empty jersey), husband/wife, missionary:

My husband is more bald than me now!

I had so much trouble finding a “real” red hair dye! Before trying any color, I bleached it and re-shaved our team logo bike pattern:

6/15/11

The first color I tried made my hair bright pink:

RED wine...really?

So then I bleached it again…twice:

Crossing my fingers that bleach won't ruin the color!

Then I tried a color called Coral Red, which made it orange:

Pretty, but not what I had in mind...

Finally I found a (different brand) color called “Truly Red.” I kept the orange underneath, and it worked!

6/16/11: Much better! Red with a hint of orange, just like our team color.

I tried to take as many pictures of my hair on this trip as possible. The red faded quickly back to orange, but for the most part, it matched our jerseys. Here I am on about the fourth day:

6/23/11

A couple days later, it faded more…but you can barely notice with the beautiful background of the Appalachians in West Virginia!

6/25/11

Later that day (I think; the days all sort of blended into one, with a schedule of “sleep when you’re done, wake up when it’s time to ride again”), I made myself a recovery drink with a hand-made funnel while trying to balance with in the moving RV:

You can barely make out the image of the bike...

Later still that day (maybe?), we made a stop at Gettysburg, and got a picture with my husband:

You can't see here, but he actually shaved his head bald for this trip!

Finally, 7 days, 8 hours, and 30 minutes later, we arrived at the finish line! Hair = completely orange:

I had planned on dyeing it again during the trip if I could, but I valued sleep too much. I’m surprised I actually got a chance (correction: TOOK a chance) to shave my head in the middle of all of this. At any rate, I brought my red gel with me, so when we had our celebration wine, I once again had red hair:

The next day, my husband and I went for a nice relaxing ride, AEB this right here:

It's good to be done!

I flew home the next day, and my husband is still making his way home in one of the RV’s. In the meantime, my head has become a bit fuzzy:

It’s time to bust out the razor again!

Finally, shaved the sides…

And, just in time for 4^th of July, I dyed it red once again:

7/2/11

7/3/11

Happy Independence Day – God Bless America! It truly is a beautiful country, and it was amazing to experience 401.25 miles of it on a bike. Maybe some day I’ll do the whole thing…

INTERVIEW

Somehow my Bald Love story made it all the way to Florida, to a Music Therapist named Michelle. She contacted me for a Skype interview. Awesome! She shared it on her blog, http://musictherapytween.com/, and I thought I’d share it here as well. Michelle asks me questions about Bald Love:

I thought it was great that she wanted to ask my advice, to help inspire other MT’s to start their own fundraisers. Mine has been very successful, and I’m glad to help!

WATCH OUT FOR THE FIRE!

Are you ready to see how we keep up with social network stuff at ASD? This is the coolest thing. Since most of our students have video clearance (including for sites like YouTube and Facebook), I was able to post a clip of the video we’re working on. Awesome! The song is called “Watch Out for the Fire.” Since we’re still working on recording the lyrics, I chose an instrumental section to post. It includes a drum solo (played on a djembe) and a guitar solo (played by me on our electronic keyboard, but written by students). The students are not actually playing the instruments for the purpose of the music video; it’s more of a visual, because this scene is a concert. Ok, enough explanation…here it is!

WHAT’S NEW WITH YOUR MOHAWK?

I’ve really been having some fun with the mohawk I’m growing! Here it is with some red gel:

5/13/11

Gel is nice, but what about semi-permanent dye? Even better! I couldn’t decide between blue or pink, and since one of my co-workers is pregnant and didn’t know if she was having a boy or girl, I figured half and half would be perfect. So here we go!

Step 1: pink

Step 2: add the blue

5/16/11: And here it is!

5/16/11

5/21/11

It’s a girl, so eventually I’ll go all pink in her honor, but to even it out, I thought I’d change it up and go purple:

Adding blue to the pink side and pink to the blue side

5/26/11: Pink + Blue does = Purple!

When I first dyed the mohawk, I also dyed a little patch of hair on the right side of my head, for a design. This is what I was going for:

In June, I’ll be riding my bike across the country in an 8-person team (Team Life Changers). Here’s part of our logo, the bike:

5/16/11: Prep!

Don't worry, the blue dye washed off my head. :)

The blue didn’t show up as nicely as I thought, but it was better once it grew out a little!

5/21/11

5/26/11

As for the mohawk, it’s easy to take care of when I leave it fuzzy, but sometimes I like to spike it:

I like the faded colors...

5/24/11

5/27/11

It's nice to show my face every once in a while!

So I’ve shown you some portraits that my student “Maiden” has drawn. Here’s his interpretation of my mohawk:

See the bald head with the darker mohawk on top?

Throughout this whole thing, my husband has been awesome in supporting me. Although it makes him sad that I shaved all my hair off, he is somewhat glad that I’m at least growing part of it back! Greg, I’d like to thank you for your support of this project, for the patience, love and acceptance you’ve shown me as I slowly…slowly… grow my hair back. I know it hasn’t been easy to see your wife take a razor to her head!