Girlie Girl Success! And Bike Upgrades!

First, I have to tell you all what a huge success our story found on the Girlie Girl Army blog. We challenged GGA readers to contribute $600 that would be matched by close friends of Chuck and Jen, and the response was outstanding! Here are some numbers.

The total of the donations from GGA readers who commented "Girlie Girl Army is here for Chuck" as we requested in that blog was $585, bringing us within $15 of our goal. But we know that many readers just forgot to leave the comment, and analytics we received from Ethan at give forward show that while 18 GGA readers left comments, there were 32 donations from people clicking over from the GGA site! Counting those extra 14 donations, we easily surpassed the $600 mark.

Ethan also told me, "There were 133 people that visited from GGA with a 24% conversion rate. Remarkable!! I don't think I've ever seen such a high conversion rate for any of our users."

Since I'm not a techy type, I'm not sure what all that means, but it sounds impressive!

Finally, I think it's worth noting that before the GGA blog, we were stuck at around 12% or 13% for a number of days. Since that blog was posted, we've climbed to 24%!

So in summary, the Girlie Girl Army just kicked ass this week! Thank you to GGA creator Chloe Jo Berman for giving us a platform to reach new ears with our story. Thank you to J.B and Diana for generously contributing the first $300 donation match, and thank you to Gene, Tricia, Ian, Melissa and Mike, along with one donor who wishes to remain anonymous, for putting together the second $300 match. And once again, thank you to all the GGA readers who gave so generously in response to our challenge. You are all amazing!

I should also mention that Erin Howard, our audio/video person at Farm Sanctuary, has given me another $300 sum for yet another match challenge, yet to be announced. Please stay tuned for that and help us make the next challenge as successful as this one.

Now for a brief training update. Jenn and I picked up her new bike yesterday and it is super fast! (I'll have some pictures up soon but I'm waiting for my camera batteries to charge.) Now I need to work hard to keep up with her. To help myself a little bit, I put new tires on my mountain bike, switching wide and knobby for less wide and fairly smooth. Giles says they smell different too, but I'm not sure how that affects performance.

Today is going to be pretty busy as I have to meet somebody in one hour who might buy Chuck and Jen's composting toilet, and after that we have a surprise party to attend in Watkins Glen. But we got in a nice 9 mile ride this morning and plan to do more riding and/or walking this evening. Zoe is helping to table for Farm Sanctuary at Ithaca Festival but I think she's planning to join us for training later. And tomorrow I'm hoping that we can all get in at least 20 miles of walking and 15 on the bikes. We'll see how it goes.