It was a dark stormy morning and the skies were angry my friends. This did not deter teamTLC from participating in the tour de cookie in Rockville, MD this past weekend. We unloaded our bikes and rolled into the expo village area and looking around, it reminded me of the village in Philly for Livestrong. It was just perfect, as we looked around at the stands, food areas, Tree House stand and more, I could only think of one thing, this is so Drew. Just as I thought about that, I saw the cookie angel and the sun peeked through the clouds.
It was a great day as we had the opportunity to speak to many of the people manning the cookie stands who asked what TLC was, so we felt really good of sharing our story. We learned a lot of how an event like this works, if we were to choose this route to raise money. The Tree House raised over $30,000 through this event and the proceeds benefitted the Tree House. The Tree House CAC of Montgomery County Maryland is dedicated to reducing trauma and promoting healing for child victims of physical abuse, sexual abuse, and neglect. Through an innovative collaborative process between the private and public sectors, key professionals come together on behalf of the best interests of victims. This effective early intervention is essential to ensure that an abused child or adolescent develops into a healthy and productive adult, capable of forming trusting and loving relationships. Underpinning the work of The Tree House is the belief that the cycle of child abuse can be broken and the knowledge that child abuse and neglect is preventable!
We rode 42 miles through a very challenging and hilly route from Rockville, out to Potomac and beyond and then looped back through Gaithersburg and Rockville. The course had over 2400 feet of climbing and we endured a flat and some adverse riding conditions. There were over 600 riders and the weather over the course of the day turned out to be perfect. There were 11 cookie stands in the 42-mile loop and we felt pretty compelled, while learning about the different organizations that we should have at least one cookie, but mostly 2 per stand. The corn cookie was my favorite. They even had Star Wars cookies (See what you missed Scott Niehoff). Each cookie stand was manned by a group who was somehow tied to helping children in need and in hindsight it would have been a great idea for TLC to have a booth of its own to help spread the word.
It was a very enjoyable day and we all headed back to Virginia feeling blessed that we could help the Tree House’s cause and also learn about so many future opportunities for TLC.