It’s that time of year again, when the plans for the Ride Across America with Kyle and Pattie Petty are being finalized. This is the 16th anniversary of this amazing event which runs May 1st through the 9th. 200 motorcycle riders will join Petty for this event which kicks off in Indian Wells, California and finalizes in Randleman, N.C. at the Victory Junction Gang Camp, the facility founded in 2004 by Kyle and wife Pattie in honor of their late son Adam.

The camp is an amazing facility which offers a much needed and medically-sound year round camping experience to children with chronic and terminal illnesses. This is a place where these children can, as much as possible, forget what illnesses plague their daily lives, and can just have fun. Laughter is, after all, an amazing medicine, and these kids need to and do laugh, laugh, laugh.

During the charity ride, the participates will greet fans and supporters at stops in North Las Vegas, Nevada, Richfield, Utah, Durango, Colorado, Amarillo, Texas, Texarkana, Texas, Choctaw, Mississippi, Chattanooga, Tennessee and Asheville, N.C. where fans and supporters who have held various charity events to raise fund for Victory Junction will have the opportunity to meet and present the Pettys with their donations.

Operating solely on donations, Victory Junction Camp has now brought laughter and fun to the lives of more than 7000 chronically ill children ages 6 to 16 free of charge. Last year ground was broken for a new facility in Kansas City, Kansas. This year’s success in raising funds is particularly important, because the economy has affected everyone and more and more children are deserving of the Camp’s services now more than ever!

I spoke with Kyle last week about the upcoming ride. The excitement in his voice was so evident. “It’s time to ride again,” he began laughingly. Speaking about, hopefully better weather than the last month nationwide, “We’ll probably get a springtime that’s 200 degrees since the winter has been snowy and icy and rainy for the last 15 or 20 days of winter. Then we’ll probably get a springtime that goes straight in to summer.”

“This is our 16th year. That is the most amazing part to me, that this ride has lasted for 16 years. I think that’s a tribute to the people who go on this ride. There’s a core group of about 35 to 40 people that go every single year and they invite different friends. There’s about 150 to 200 people every year, but, it’s that core group that keeps this going.”

“This is (like) extended family and obviously by being on this thing and having this thing go for this long of a period of time, like in any family you experience really high highs and really low lows. We have lost people during the course of the year through illness, accidents and other ways…family members from the ride have passed away. It’s truly amazing to go to Charlotte or to have to fly to Texas for a funeral or some illness in somebody’s family and you get there and everybody from the motorcycle ride is there. You understand why people ride bikes and have that brotherhood because it truly is an extended family. Everybody pulls together. When we lost Adam, looking back, you think how your close and good friends respond to that. And it’s funny because everybody handles grief in a different way and everybody looks at things in a different way and just knowing somebody who cares is there is important. That’s the way the people on the ride are. You know they are always there.”

“We all live in different parts of the country. We’ve got guys who go on the ride, the Bartels, who live in San Francisco. We’ve got people who live in Durango, Colorado, we’re going through there this year, and people everywhere. And it’s funny how you’ll get back together on the ride each year and somebody has gone on vacation and called up somebody (from the ride) and stayed at their house. It’s like yeah we were passing through Durango so we stayed with the Cables and some of those people, so, it’s pretty amazing how we’re such a tight group. We all are pretty much family.”

I asked what they do for overnight stays…do different people do different things? Do they camp out or stay in motels? How is that handled?

“Well,” Kyle continued,”it really depends. It depends on where we are and what we’re doing. Like when we get to Durango this year, the Cables, Dee Dee and that crowd are going to have a dinner for us. They have a place there and the night after that we are going to be in Amarillo. We’ve been through there before and done some stuff with the Quarter Horse Industry and we’re just going to have an open night where everybody can go out on the town and do whatever they want to. And when we get to Philadelphia, Mississippi we’re staying at a casino and we’re going to have a poker night to help raise money for the camp and some local charities. So, it really depends on where we’re at and what we’re doing.

“We always stay at hotels. Sometimes we have to stay at 4 or 5 because there are so many of us, but, we always stay at pretty nice places. We eat breakfast and lunch together but at night sometimes we scatter and each do something different. But, it’s pretty cool to see this many people and this many motorcycles come to a town all at one time. And we have our support vehicles which is another staff of 50 to 100 people with us in trucks and trailers and a medical unit who travel along, so, for insurance purposes, hotel purposes, we know who is going before we leave. Diane Huff and those guys have checked everything out and have narrowed it down to a science from police escorts to hotels to lunch stops and to gas stops. Everybody knows months in advance when we’re coming so they are prepared for us.”

“We start planning for next year almost immediately. Diane Huff and Morgan Castano kind of run everything over there. They work on it all year and make sure everything works. It’s the people on the journey that make ride. It’s not the destination. It’s the camaraderie that makes it all so enjoyable.”

It sounds amazing…these great people coming together for such a great cause. It is just what we have all come to expect from this amazing Petty family. We at www.catchfence.com wish them a safe, enjoyable and successful journey. I laughing as I say I may take you up on the invitation some time, Kyle, but I will have to ride in the van and thanks for that suggestion!

For more information about Victory Junction, please visit www.victoryjunction.org. And for more information about the Charity Ride, please visit www.kylepettycharityride.com.

Again, good luck and God Bless!