Do You Know What You’re Doing?

Becky came home a few days ago and asked a rather curious question.

“What exactly IS Rich’s Ride?”

Okay, it was a question someone asked her and she realized she didn’t have a succinct response.

At first I dismissed it as a dumb question, but my classroom experience taught me “that’s a dumb question” usually means “I don’t have a good answer.” If I’m going to invest this much time and effort in a project, I ought to be able to explain what I’m doing, right?

A lot of folks have joined the circle recently. We’re glad you’re here, but you came from different places for different reasons. I thought this might be a good time to describe what we’re up to.

So, what exactly IS Rich’s Ride?

Everyone advises you to have an “elevator pitch,” a description of your project you can deliver before the elevator reaches its destination. It’s not designed to completely describe your idea, but it should arouse interest and spur further investigation.

So here’s my elevator pitch:

RICH’S RIDE uses Rich’s love of handcycling to share a message of hope and possibility. We use a series of long-distance handcycle rides to demonstrate that it’s possible to overcome adversity and accomplish big dreams. As part of our rides we also raise funds and awareness for organizations that offer compassion, justice, and hope.

Whatcha think?

Becky and I have a big, audacious vision. We believe in hope, a confident expectation rooted in faith that God will keep His promises. We both know what it’s like to feel hopeless. Many folks around us and across the world live without hope, and we’re crazy enough to believe we can make a difference.

We want to share the message of hope with which God’s blessed us, because HOPE changes what’s possible. So that’s the vision behind RICH’S RIDE.

SHARE HOPE

We share our message of hope by working on the three branches of our Mission:

• Demonstrate that it’s possible to overcome adversity and accomplish big dreams.
• Express our message of hope, possibility, and God’s faithfulness.
• Partner with organizations that offer compassion, justice, and hope by raising funds and awareness to support their work.

Demonstrate. It started with a crazy dream. You can read more here, but we discovered that there was something inspirational about a guy doing something outrageous.

We ask a simple question: “If an old, bald, crippled guy can crank a handcycle 1500 miles along the entire length of the Mississippi River, what could you do if you stopped believing in impossible?”

Express. We speak to all sorts of audiences. We write books. We blog. We talk to people wherever we can about hope, possibility, and following big dreams.

Partner. Through relationships with local and worldwide organizations, we use the platform of RICH’S RIDE to raise awareness about important issues of oppression and social injustice. We offer opportunities to support these causes financially. Learn more about our social justice partners.

I hope you’ll explore our web site for more details, including the continuing story of our journeys. And please leave a comment when you can, because hearing from you is the inspiration that keeps us going.

Make sure you tune in Monday. We’ll officially unveil our next project.

(Hint: Cactus will be involved.)

Please leave a comment here.