This is the Red Team Leader. It's the IT Grand Prix Day "0". I'm at YUL the main airport in Montreal Quebec Canada. My flight for Washington DC leaves in 90 minutes, and I'm pretty excited!

First lets talk about some cool facts. I'm starting this race in Montreal one of the first french cities established in North America, it's cool to think that I will be ending the race in New Orleans, another city of French decent. Of course these two cities have evolved very differently over the past 300 years. Here are some symbols the two cities share:

The Fluer De Lys or Lis depending on who you ask is speckled everywhere in both cities. On buildings, on flags including both cities flags:

New Orleans:

Montreal:

They also happen to share another interesting distinction at the moment, both cities are home to Football Champions. The Montreal Alouettes of the CFL and the New Orleans Saints whom as many of you already know play in the NFL. All this to say that it's a true honour to be traveling to throughout the U.S. to arrive at such a storied and unique city.

Next as many of you are no doubt taking the Memorial day weekend holiday today I would ask you to stop for a few minutes today and reflect on the sacrifice of the men and woman of the armed forces. No matter what your beliefs, the conviction and courage that these men and woman demonstrate to protecting our freedom is difficult to capture in words. Let's honor them by making sure to think about them today. It's a special honor for me to be arriving in Washington on this day, and I hope I can partake in some of the ceremonies that might be taking place commemorating the people that commit themselves to service in the name of freedom.

Finally this leads into my last request. The red team needs more people to help us out. Over the next few days Chris and I will be trying to do our best to help out charities on the ground, We need the Red Team Virtual Pit Crew to help us out online! Post some discussions in the forums, Don't forget to create your virtual business card, make sure to send it out to all your contacts. You can take a look at the Challenges link above to see what else you can do to help!

Now that we're in the swing of things expect to see a lot more posts! don't forget to leave your comments!

Let's Get Racing!

-Daniel

Red Team Leader