Pay My Wife To Be Crazy. Er. And Help People.

If you haven’t been paying attention, my wife Gini has committed herself to a mad project: riding 150 miles in two days to help fight Multiple Sclerosis.  She’s doing this because of her grandfather – read her touching essay on the topic – and because a friend of ours in town, Patti, has MS.
I wish you all could meet Patti, and if you live in Cleveland, you probably have.  Patti’s one of the sunniest, wittiest, cleverest women around, so much so that you occasionally have to remind yourself, “Oh, right, she has a disease that is stripping the motor functions from her body.”  She has good days and bad days, but retains her sense of humor.  Amazon.com once issued me an email that said, “People who liked [GINI JUDD] also liked [PATTI].”
As a way to fight this evil, Patti’s husband Mike has created the “Patti’s Paladins” biking group, which pedals out to a lighthouse once a year in a gruelling display of physical fitness.  Well, it’s not that hard for Mike, who is so fit that they literally had to give him amphetamines before surgery because his resting heart rate is below what a normal human’s heart rate is while sedated.  This, I believe, officially makes Mike a superhero.
Gini, however, was starting from scratch.  She wants to do this.  She’s been getting on her bike every day, pushing herself so hard she trembles the next day, reporting in: “Ten miles.”  “Fifteen miles.”  “Twenty, but I had to take a break.”  She’s up to forty-one miles, a three-and-a-half-hour sweatfest that left her wrecked, but she is determined to make it to the lighthouse.  For Patti.  For herself.  For all other sufferers of MS.
What she needs is sponsors.  Many, many sponsors.  As she says, “10 cents a mile is only $15 out of your pocket for 150 miles of my effort. Of course a dollar a mile would be quite lovely, but any pledge is money going straight to an important and worthy cause.”  So I would strongly request, if you can, to give some cash to my wife, who is straining her healthy legs and lungs and heart for those whose legs and lungs and hearts are slowly deteriorating.
It’s a good cause.  Help her, audience.  You’re her only hope.