Click on Zar Zar’s picture to head on over to the Watsi site to view her story and others like her.

ZAR ZAR’S STORY

“Growing up Zar Zar was often sick and experienced flu like symptoms,” explain our partners at Burma Border Projects. “She feels weak and is tired after doing small tasks or walking short distances. Small tasks also impact her ability to breathe properly. She said her symptoms are manageable but she worries what will happen to her health in the future it left untreated.”

 

Zar Zar is a 27-year-old woman from Burma, where she lives with her parents. Together, they plant peanuts and beans to support themselves. Their farming income covers food and their basic bills, but does not allow them to save nor address Zar Zar’s ongoing health issues. Our partners at Burma Border Projects diagnosed Zar Zar with mitral valve stenosis, a heart condition that arises when a major valve in the heart is narrower than usual. As a result, blood flow can be uneven within the heart, which can result in heart palpitations, exhaustion or even heart failure.

 

For $1,500, we can fund complex cardiac surgery to correct Zar Zar’s heart valve, so she can regain strength and endurance. With her increased strength, Zar Zar will be able to contribute more around the house and to her family’s farm, increasing their earnings. She will also be able to have children one day, fulfilling her dream of providing for her own children and helping them go to school!

As always, if you enter the Watsi site through https://watsi.org/welcome/within-biking-distance/within-biking-distance your donation will be tracked in our campaign. If not, that’s cool too. We just want you folks to help folks.

-Lizzy

We made it to Washington, this time it’s for real.

Today we ended up in Walla Walla Washington, our second time in Washington this tour if you’ve been counting. Riding through the Gorge the last few days I got the sense that everything was melting and slowly dripping into the Columbia to be washed from memory. I suppose that is what geologists say is happening, but feeling it happen is different from knowing it is happening. I have lived in Oregon for most of my life, and I have many memories sturgeon fishing at Bonneville Dam with my dad, so the Columbia Gorge is not a new place to me–but it felt like an entirely new world on a bicycle. Liz, Beef, and I were amazed at the rapidity in which the landscape was changing around us. We pedaled through lush, waterfall laden forests to arid, scrubby ranch land. The East half of the Columbia Gorge is not tired or lonely, but those are the words that come to mind when trying to describe it. I like it out here. There is a tree in bloom that I am quite taken with. I believe it is a flowering lotus tree but I am probably wrong. Anyway, it is blooming like crazy out here and it smells like Jasmine and kisses.

We have been blessed time and time again this tour and it is only our fifth day. A man approached us earlier and though he was out of work, he gave us grocery money and said God put it on his heart to give it to us. We talked with him for a while and I was moved by the amount of love he had for his family, something that I could sense by the way he talked about them. He is expecting a grandbaby this year, its a girl. He said that we had the legs for such long tour–not like those spindly racer guys (his words not mine). We were also given showers, electricity,internet, dinner, and a place to stay out of the rain tonight by a wonderful couple here in Walla Walla. It never ceases to amaze me the generosity and love that can be found in strangers. It is a lesson that does good for the heart to learn.

Beautiful Waterfall

Lizz on historic route 30. If you have a bike, you must ride there.

The Eastern half is a bit dryer, but still beautiful

Lizzy battling the wind

What started as terrible cross winds that sapped any coast we had going downhill, and which literally blew us off the road, quickly turned into tailwinds. We were able to get 81 miles in yesterday, though we are both feeling it today. We were hoping to come upon a McDonalds or a Walmart in Umatilla to loiter in for a while, but were sorely disappointed when we got there. No such luck. We ended up eating re-fried beans on Matzos with some taco sauce Lizzy’s dad gave us for dinner at the top of a hill that overlooked McNary Dam.

Lizz and Beef experience some windy gusts

Mighty Hunq, mighty river

For a funny look at the crazy steep stairs on Hwy 30, click the video link below.