150 Miles, 8 stops – Daytripping in the Twin Cities for Celiac Disease

Whew what a day. How could 5 hours in the car be so exhausting? Monday I spent my day traveling from gluten-free store to gluten-free store. I put 150 miles on my car even though I was never more than 40 miles from home; all in the name of celiac disease.

Here in the Twin Cities, we are entering into the home stretch before our Making Tracks for Celiacs run/walk and food fair on May 16th. It is a huge undertaking and this year I am the main coordinator for the big event. Monday my task was getting state permits from the Departments of Agriculture and Health signed off by the appropriate businesses who will be sampling and selling their items at the walk. I was concerned that mailing would take too much time. So I went to each local vendor and helped them fill out and sign the permit applications.  Vendors outside of the Twin Cities area will get theirs in the mail in the next few days.  It’s a cumbersome process that hopefully will eventually get streamlined on the web to make it easier.

As the next few weeks fly by, the planning committee and I will be worried about door prizes and raffle prizes as well as whether there will be enough bathrooms, electricity, t-shirts and water bottles for the participants and vendors.  Somehow it does all come together, with a lot of hard work and strong volunteers.  Well there’s your insight on the craziness that’s involved in planning a big event like this.

In the meantime, I want you to know more about Making Tracks for Celiacs in the Twin Cities.  We expect more than 1,200 people to attend the event at Holy Family Catholic High School in Victoria, Minnesota. More than 50 companies are involved this year and from what I’m hearing they’re really excited! Meanwhile, food donations from Allergaroo, Kitchen Table Bakers, Sunstart USA, Glee Gum, Grainless Baker, Kinnikinnick, Chex Cereals, Pamela’s Products and more continue to pour in.

If you are in the Minnesota area the weekend of May 16th, I highly recommend you take your own “daytrip” and come on down…over…up to the Twin Cities for this great event! Registration for the walk is FREE (where else can you find that?); the run is $20 for pre-registration and $25 on race day. We also have kids’ races and games, as well as special appearances by Goldy Gopher, TC Bear and Ronald McDonald.

For more information go to the Celiac Walk website, or our Twin Cities ROCK group site.

Please spread the word!

Tags: celiac, fundraiser, Making Tracks for Celiacs, run, walk