Bearing Witness

Final Countdown: 3 days til Chefs Cycle for No Kid Hungry

Saturday, May 11, 2019

As our 300 mile bike ride looms closer,  I keep stopping by the office of Adele Nelson our Chefs Cycle director. I get more curious about the fundraising, the other riders, and especially the routes and elevations.  I feel like the college version of myself showing up in a professor’s office hoping for some hint of what’s going to be on the final exam, some tidbit that will make me think I’ve got a chance of avoiding an incomplete for the course.

Even though this will be my 5^th ride, there is an uncertainty that can’t help but make you a little anxious. The imagination can conjure an infinite number of potential indignities that loom on the long and winding road ahead.  But aside from benefiting from the training, and even perversely enjoying the three days on the bike, I ride because it is so inspiring to see what those around me – well actually most ahead of me and a few behind – are doing and why.

Hundreds of the chefs, restaurateurs and donors who have always been at the core of Share Our Strength will be persisting through pain, discomfort and exhaustion.  They will be taking risks, physically, mentally, and socially. They will forging ahead toward the finish line more on faith than certainty. In short, they will be doing all of the things we are doing and need to be doing to succeed in our larger daunting journey of ending childhood hunger. And they are doing it, as we are, because they know childhood hunger is wrong, urgent, and within their power to solve.