Good morning from Oceanside!  My goodness its hard to sleep when you’ve got something like this on your mind.  Yesterday was a blur of activity: team meetings, inspections and errands.  Sandy Condray, our team logistics director, was outstanding….......we passed inspection with flying colors.  I am so incredibly grateful for her leadership.  To consider that one month ago, we didn’t even have a team director (as our prior leader had to pull out).  She has stepped up HUGE.  This wouldn’t be possible without her.

Another person on my mind this morning is Michael Lemanski, a partner at GreenFire, the commercial development firm in Durham.  He trained for the race as an alternate to be ready in the event that something happened to one of us.  I think of servant commitment like that and I am just humbled.  He’s another one of those people in Durham that make our city so great…...there are lots and lots of them, at the DurhamCares’ 18 charities and so many other ones.

We watched the piece on DurhamCares on WRAL TV last night (check it out on the DurhamCares WRAL page) and was just completely struck by how awesome BigBrothersBigSisters is as a program and how grateful I am for people like Sean Radke who have gotten out there to love their neighbor by investing in their “little” brother’s lives.  BBBS is the real deal.  I do hope that folks never think, btw, that the 18 we have featured are the only great charities in Durham…........far from it.  I hope with time that we’ll be able to recognize more of those folks as they apply for our success grant program.  At last count, we have placed volunteers with 60 different organizations…..all very worth of our gratitude, investment and time.

I’m off to go get coffee and breakfast…..then lots more team meetings before the “Grand Depart” at 2:29pm.