Dan Pallotta's speech continued.....

Over the last five days it's our hope that you saw within yourself a person worth loving.  A person who is kind, who is compassionate, and who is doing their best to make the world a better place for all to live in. 

A person who deserves your respect.  And a person who doesn't need to be limited or unloved any more by the cynical voices within and without.

And we hope that you saw in those around you how much more like you they are than different from you.  How much they want to be treated kindly.

And how much they want to treat others the same.  How much they have suffered in their own lives. 
The loss they have endured.  The courage they have tried, with all their hearts, to muster in the hope that they might see a glimpse of the greater promise within them.

We built the Vaccine Ride so that people might see a new strength within and that they might experience what the world could be like if people were simply kind to one another. 

We hope we have done our jobs for you.  We hope that we delivered, and that you take
something important away with you today. 

We also built the Vaccine Ride, and the new Montana and Canada/U.S. Vaccine Rides, so that the lost people of the world might be lost no more.  That the forgotten poor, in the huts and villages of half the globe, might be forgotten no more.

I invite you to look at the Alaska AIDS Vaccine Ride as we look at it at Pallotta Teamworks.  As a first strike that you all have inaugurated in a battle to end the AIDS epidemic as part of a continuum of effort that will go on and that must go on until the forgotten people have been rescued from horrific death and suffering. 

We have seen the power of caring for one another this week.  This week we left no one behind.

Let us not leave that principle behind even.  Let us not limit that ideal to the memory of the past six days. 

There is a desert of abandonment.  There is a desert of poverty.  There is a desert where AIDS roams, a predator stalking the weak and the neglected. 

Let us leave no one in that sad place.

Do not forget what we have done here this week.  Do not forget what you did here this week. 

We look forward to seeing you next year either in Alaska, or in Montana, or in Montreal, or in all three.  But for now, go get yourself a shower, go get some hot food. 

We'll see you next year.

Let's make AIDS history!  

Good night, everyone.