Shaving Day

Well, the day finally came - time to shave off the beard!!  As many of you know, I have been fundraising for Levi Leipheimer's Gran Fondo charity bike ride.  I had set my goal at raising $1500.  In order to encourage people to donate, I offered up the incentive of shaving my beard off - something I haven't done in something like 16 or 17 years.  In addition, the person giving the most could come and do the shaving!  Well, I hit my goal a while back, and an old college buddy, Bill was the lucky winner, donating $250 to the cause.

After I hit $1500 - I readjusted my fundraising goal to $2100 (the next incentive level).  I am $150 short of that goal.  If you are reading this, and would like to help out - the deadline is Tuesday Sept 20!!  So please donate quickly!!  Go here to donate...   http://www.levisgranfondo.com/fundraising/portal/?user=ccallana
The charities the ride supports are great - Livestrong cancer research, the Forget-me-not farm for at risk kids, lots of local Santa Rosa charities....  It would be great to stay in the top 10 donors, so please consider helping out if you can.

So we worked out with Bill to come up from the Bay Area to take care of his prize - they came up this weekend, and unbeknownst to me, had been conspiring with my wife to do something a bit different.  Instead of shaving at home, we went to a local barbershop for a professional shave.

They chose a new place in town, Lucky's - which happens to be in the local bowling alley :)   Very different barbershop than I have seen before - the barbers were all young guys with tatoos and piercings and such.   We were directed to Joe for the afternoon's hair removal process.

For those of you who already forgot what I looked like, here is the 'before' picture

As the clippers started knocking the beard off, the boys seemed a bit concerned

The guys decided to have a little fun, and create a "new" look - Not sure I like this one....

So he finished up with the clippers, and moved on to the actually shaving - straight razor style.  Got the hot towel treatment and everything

After a bit of relaxing with the towel, the shaving cream and razor came out....

The rest of the family wasn't quite sure this was such a good idea.......

But after the beard came off, they - meaning everybody in the whole place - convinced me that I should basically shave my head too.  Well, really a size 1/2 (that's 'half') guard on the clippers....

When everything was all said and done - the 'after' picture

Needless to say, I don't really even recognize myself.  I have never cut my hair this short - ever.  And of course, it's been so many years that I have had the beard - I forgot what it looks like underneath!  But if it is weird for me, it is even stranger for the kids.  They have spent a lot of time touching my head and face

If they had not been there to see it - they may not have even known it was me :)

So here we are - my boys, me, and man who made this possible.

A huge thanks goes out to all of you who donated - this wouldn't have happened without you.  I'm sure the folks at Bike Monkey thank you too :)  Big thanks to Bill as well for such an entertaining way to bring this to fruition.  And of course, thanks to my family for being supportive and encouraging.

The open question everyone keeps asking - how long am I going to leave it like this.  Honestly I don't know.  I will likely grow my hair out a bit longer - it is barely more than stubble right now.  I hate shaving, so I'm not sure how long I can keep it up - but we'll see....

Not sure what incentive I'll be able to come up with next year to get ya'll to donate, but I'm guessing it is going to have to be pretty good to top this one!!