The Dude Abides on Salt Spring Island, Canada!

Here's a picture taken by Jonathan and Kaleigh, my Canadian besties, who took this picture out at Nose Point on Salt Spring Island, the island where my parents go to every year for their anniversary.

There's more abiding to come from the photo shoot they took while on the island last week...but I wanted to post this one on here first!

Examples of Yesteryear

Here are some examples from the past of Dude Abidings. Of course, these were back in the days of the temporary tattoos...you don't have to do that, though it is an option as there is printable temporary tattoo paper. But I think a cutout would suffice! :-)

The Idea

When my dad was first diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma in 2009, I immediately signed up to participate in a 100-mile bike ride in Maryland through Team in Training, a non-profit fundraising organization through the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.


As a special surprise for my dad during my event in Salisbury, Maryland, I had Races2Remember create a special temporary tattoos that featured a picture of him with the words "The Dude Abides."

It was a big hit amongst friends, family and those who donated to my fundraising efforts during that time. It was also a big hit amongst other cyclists at the event, I had to have gotten at least a dozen people riding by me who loved it.

But I think my dad loved it the most. He thought it was pretty dang funny.

So, when he found out that his tumor was growing back and that the treatment would be a Autologous Stem Cell Transplant, which included a 5-6 week stay at the Med center in Omaha, I had an idea. 

Now, probably not a lot of you know this, but if my dad spends more than 2-3 days in the house, he gets cabin fever like crazy. So, I thought it might be fun to bring the world to him. 

I recreated the tattoo as best as I could using my super sweet photoshop skills (I hope you're sensing my sarcasm) and started to plan. The idea being that it would be fun to get as many photos from as many people in as many places possible of all of you and the Dude Abides image. 

So here's how it's going to work:

1. If you would like to participate, please email me and I will send you the image to download and print.
2. Print out a copy of the logo, cut it out, and then take a picture of it at a local monument or someplace cool where you live (kind of a la "Amelie" or the Travelocity Garden Gnome). You can either choose to be in the shot or have it just be a shot of the image at the location. Also, if you'd like to be environmentally friendly, please feel free to use the image on your iPhone or Droid to take a picture with it. Just make sure that you can see the picture in the image. 
3. Once you accomplished step 2, feel free to add an awesome message of some sort, either a personal message or a quote or even just a single word to the image (if you don't know how to do this, or don't have the correct software you can just email me the text and I can put it in there for you). 
4. Email the images back to me and I will both post them to this blog, and print them out for him to put up on the wall in his hospital room. If you are doing something extra special that requires that it be mailed, email me and I will let you know where to send it.

In my next post, I will show you some examples from my ride in 2009. But feel free to get as imaginative as you'd like!!