Team CF at the Chicago Triathlon and meeting with Steve

The day after our racing adventure, we headed to downtown Chicago to see Colin's uncles in the Chicago Triathlon. Uncle Bryan was competing in the triple - three tris in 24 hours. Insane, I know. Uncle Mark was competing in the tri for Team CF. Both did great and we're always proud to see them doing their part to find a cure.



At the finish line, we bumped into Steve Ferkau. I doubt it was a total accident, Steve probably saw the CFF banners or knew someone competing.  Steve is an amazing guy.  Probably one of the most uplifting people we know, in fact.  Steve has cf and about nine years ago, received new lungs.  He was at 10% capacity at the time, wheelchair bound, and the outlook wasn't good.  He had been passed over or the opportunity fell through a number of times for other lung transplants for him.  Then, he received his gift.  Unlike some transplants, this wasn't just an insert of a new organ and Steve went on his merry way.  Steve received his lungs from a teen in Iowa who was killed in an accident.  Steve made the connection with the family and to this day he carries around pictures and articles of the girl that saved his life.  Within a couple months of the new lungs, Steve was climbing stairs at work that seemed an Everest to him in the past.  Not only that, but he started doing the stair climbs in Chicago: Aon, Hancock, etc.  He leads Kari's Klimbers in those stair climbs and raises a lot of money for organ transplant organizations.  He tells this story way better than I do, so I encourage you to check it out here.  And I highly recommend that you stop and talk to him the next stair climb you see him at.  You'll never talk to a happier, more upbeat person.

Racing to a Cure

Last week, we were asked by CFF if Colin would like to head out to Chicagoland Speedway and meet with a real racecar driver. We jumped at the chance.

The backstory: Beasley Allen is a national law firm. They have someone on staff with cf and to show their support, they give CFF a spot on their car for publicity. At the towns they visit for races, they try to put together a meet and greet with a local cf family. We happened to be that family in Chicago and we couldn't have been more thrilled.

We met the kids as they were getting out of school at 2:30 and headed as fast as we could to Joliet to meet up with Grant Enfinger, who drives car 83. He's also the mechanic, the rig driver, the janitor, you name it. He was an exceptionally nice guy and showed Colin around the car and even let him sit in it.

The PR woman mentioned that we could visit the winner's circle if Grant won the race that night. We figured it was a long shot, more of a tease than anything, but we hung out for the race.

Grant started the race in a position in the high teens, maybe even low twenties. On the final lap, he was in second place, a hair behind the leader. He crossed the finish line just a 1/2 length behind the winner. never have we been so involved in a race, jumping up and down and cheering him on the entire way. It was pretty exciting.

I was thinking about the race and realized that it's a lot like cf and fundraising to find a cure. Both are a long race. They take a lot of money, determination, drive, and it takes the best to even stay in the race, much less win it. In the end, Grant hasn't yet won, just like we haven't won, but he was so close. It was in sight, he could taste it, he could see the checked flag, but he hasn't yet won. Just like us. His day will come, and so will ours.

It reminded me of a story that was told to us at the very first event we attended for cf about seven years ago. We were the guests of the chair family, even though they had never met us. They wanted us to see a big event because someone saw potential in us way back then (or they saw suckers about to dive in head first into a whole lot of work - poh-ta-toe/pa-ta-tow). Anyway, the chair, a really down to earth, realistic guy sat us down and told us his view of this damn disease. It also had a car theme.

Cf is a car racing down the road. This is no Yugo or Bug. It's a big, old eight cylinder 4 ton caddy. Our kids are playing in the road. We'd do anything for our kids to push them out of the way of that barreling car, but there just is no way to put yourself in that position. There's no pushing them out of the way, there's no taking their place. So instead, we fundraise. We grab the bumper of that car (we fundraise) and we tell all of our friends to help us grab that car bumper. We dig our heels in and we don't let go. We're doing everything we can to slow that car down and give the scientists time to find a cure.

Whether it's a race that we almost just won or whether we're grabbing the bumper to slow the car down, we're super close. It's coming. It's going to happen in Colin's lifetime and it's going to happen soon enough that he'll be able to live to an age where he can almost forget it ever happened. Maybe he'll be racing cars....who knows, he has a long full life to decide.