Ride for 9-11 Sendoff

On Sunday morning the 24th, we drove to Hollywood with Daddy to LA City fire station number 27 where all the riders in the Ride for 9-11 would begin their trek across the country to honor all the lives lost on September 11th.

Here's the starting line.

Of course all Wes wanted to do was climb on these trucks.

The fallen fire fighters memorial outside the old Station 27, which they have now turned into a fire museum (pictures inside later).

They had a very nice ceremony announcing all the riders, and several speakers discussed how the ride started, who they were raising funds for and how important it is to Never Forget.

Wes, Chelsea, and Avery

You can see by the excitement on his face that more fire trucks were arriving for the sendoff!

Michael was only riding this first day of the tour, but they rode 127 miles in one day! He is planning on leaving at the end of August and flying to Pittsburgh to ride the remaining 10 day of the tour and attend the memorials in New York city on September 11th.

We love you Daddy!

After the riders left, we went inside the museum to check out all the neat fire memorabilia. Here is one OLD fire truck! Downstairs they had close to a dozen old fire rigs and cars along with old uniforms and fire paraphernalia.

Then we went upstairs where they had lots of fire toys and helmets and all sorts of fire collectibles. You can't see Wes' face really well, but he's got his mouth wide open in excitement at all the great toys (tears soon followed, when I told he we couldn't touch anything in the glass cases!)

But we finally found some things to touch and play with! This area is not quite finished, but it's going to be a children's educational area where they will teach fire safety such as Stop, Drop, Roll...which we have already learned well from our Clifford the Fire House Dog book!

And here were all sorts of fire trucks and fire truck shaped toys that could be played with. He got so excited when I told him he could play with these things after being told so many times not to touch and to "only look with your eyes" through the rest of the museum.

Here's a video of all the riders heading out. There were lots of other bike riders who joined the sendoff along with the Fire Hogs motorcycle group (though some of them looked like they belonged in a gang :) But they all eventually dropped off leaving only the core riders. We are keeping them all in our prayers for a safe journey!