Kyle Petty Charity Ride Diary: Day 6

Greetings from Cleveland, Ohio!

We kicked off our morning in Chicago with a special visit from Jaclyn Ann Bauer, the winner of the Charity Ride helmet design contest.

Jaclyn designed a red, white and blue helmet that I wore today. It's a great design that will be auctioned off during our stop in Hot Springs, Va. on Saturday.

MORE STORIES Ride Diary: Day 1 Ride Diary: Day 2 Ride Diary: Day 3 Ride Diary: Day 4 Ride Diary: Day 5

Following breakfast, we braved the morning rush hour traffic in Chicago to travel through Elkhart, Ind., and Swanton, Ohio, as we covered 358 miles. We are getting closer the end of our trip, yet it seems like it just began. I feel as if only yesterday we were cruising the hills and mountains of the western United States.

The charity ride is definitely a sight to see when we pull into these fuel stops. We have about 180 vehicles and 250 riders traveling with us this year. In addition to the police escort we receive from the local towns, we have volunteer officers from places like Daytona and Charlotte that act as Charity Ride patrol.

These guys spend the week guiding us down each and every street while protecting us from the traffic on the highways. We also have several vehicles that travel just behind the group of motorcycles, to help pick up any stranded bikers that may have problems as we travel.

AUDIO CLIPS Garage Pass: The Kyle Petty Charity Ride wraps up / WAV sound

Finally, we have trucks from Daytona Harley-Davidson and Victory Motorcycles to help repair and transport our bikes. It takes about 20 minutes to fuel up all the bikes. During our stop in Swanton, the Charity Ride vehicles took up the entire parking lot of the gas station of where we stopped for lunch. It was pretty cool.

Around 4 p.m. we pulled into Burke Lakefront Airport in Cleveland. It's a temporary road course where they run a bunch of open-wheel races. The entire Charity Ride took a few parade laps around the 2.0-mile course.

They even had to shut down all of the airport's traffic that afternoon just so we could ride the track. Several helicopters flew over us as we made our around the course.

It must have been cool to see from the sky. While at the airport, Steve Park hosted a dinner for the Charity Ride. Steve has been coming on the ride for several years now and we definitely have some good memories together.

	Credit: Phil Cavali

Steve has made it out to several hospital visits over the past few years and you can just see how much he enjoys being there. I have to thank guys like Steve, Ken Schrader, Terry Labonte, Jeff Green and Matt Kenseth for joining me for the ride this year. It's the last week off-week on the Winston Cup schedule and it really means a lot to me that they would take that time to be part of the ride.

While in Cleveland, my Victory motorcycle went out to Jacobs Field for the Indians v. Diamondbacks game. Diamondback pitcher Curt Schilling and Jim Thome took time out of their busy game day schedule to sign the bike.

So far, Barry Bonds, Mario Andretti and all the Winston Cup drivers on the Charity Ride have autographed the bike. This motorcycle will travel and collect more autographs before being auctioned off on ebay.com later this year.

Kyle Petty takes a few lap around Cleveland's Burke Airport, which hosts a CART event. Credit: Don Fasano

Speaking of ebay, Saturday is the last day to bid on our Petty Enterprises' Fantasy Race Trip.

The winning bidder and guest will receive a tour of the race shop, a chance to meet myself and the King, lunch at the Petty Condo at Lowe's Motor Speedway and the chance to ride shotgun with me as your driver for a qualifying run around the track.

Proceeds from the auction will benefit the Victory Junction Gang Camp, the national charity of the 2002 Charity Ride. My wife Pattie and I started the camp back in 2000 in honor of Adam.

The camp is way to let any child that suffers a severe illness to enjoy the experience of summer camp in a medically safe environment. With the Charity Ride, at the end of the day it's all about putting a smile on a kid's face. That's what we're hoping to do with the camp - help those kids keep on smiling.

Until tomorrow,

Kyle