Day 13 – Dayton, OH to Greensburg, IN

June 12th:

This day was truly doomed from the beginning.  Sometime in the afternoon, I asked my teammates “how the HELL do I even start to blog about this day?!”  This is my best attempt.  It’s likely going to be a long blog post.

The distance for the day was set at 100 miles.  It was the first “official” century of the 4K summer, although I had already completed one a few days ago after my team got lost from the get-go, causing us to add on mileage to our 93 mile day.  Here was the first major problem: we weren’t eating breakfast until 7:00 because that’s the earliest that the Rotary Club members, who had hosted us for dinner the night before, could host us for breakfast at their country club.  Yes, that’s right, we pulled up to the fancy-schmancy country club on our bikes wearing our unflattering chamois (pronounced “shammies,” which is another name for padded bike shorts) and jerseys that somehow always stink despite multiple washes.  We took off our cleats at the door as we walked inside and shook hands with members who were much more formally dressed.  We were already sweaty from biking there.

We had a delicious breakfast of pancakes, oatmeal, eggs, and other things… including – I’m not kidding – leftover sushi from the night before.  Sushi for breakfast – that’s what we like to call “4K ok.”

This Friday morning breakfast is apparently a weekly meeting that this Rotary Club holds at the country club to meet and discuss… umm, you know what?  I’m not really sure what they discuss.  Money, I suppose.  This particular meeting seemed to be particularly 4K-centric, and they ended up donating nearly $2,500 to the Ulman Cancer Fund for Young Adults.  They were very generous to us, and we were grateful for this.

However – here’s where the issue lies:  It would have been totally fine to agree to this extremely long breakfast that took over an hour if we weren’t scheduled to ride 100 miles that day.  Normally on a century day, you would want to be ON YOUR BICYCLE by 6:00am to beat the heat and traffic and get in as many miles in morning as possible before the brutal temperatures of the afternoon roll in.  Obviously, this did not happen.  We had to bike about 4 miles in the opposite direction to get to the country club, for starters.  Most of it was uphill, which was comically awful.  We then biked back to the host church we stayed at the night before because our queue sheet directions started at this church address.  When we got there, though, we realized the directions didn’t make much sense.  Roads that were supposed to connect were not connecting, and we were in downtown Dayton during the morning traffic (which, to be fair, isn’t THAT much traffic, but it was still not ideal).  Every road we took had some kind of construction or detour.  My group on this day was Sean, Brett, Kellie, and Halle.  Brett told us to follow him, but it was hilarious when his navigating kept leading to construction zones that blocked the road.  It was already a disaster because we didn’t leave Dayton until about 9:00am.

We slowly, and finally, headed in the correct direction.  The headwinds were unbelievable, and they were only getting worse.  We were pushing hard but barely maxing out at 8-9 mph.  At the second water stop, we realized it had taken us nearly 3.5 hours to complete 30 miles.  Seventy miles left to go?? — I think not.  I’m not a quitter, but I am a realist, and I already knew at 9:00 in the morning that there was absolutely no way we would complete the 100 mile day.

Our situation only grew worse as we got to the second water stop and could see huge dark clouds hovering in the distance.  We’re officially in the Midwest, where there are cornfields for days and you can see for miles around you — including impending storm clouds.  So instead of riding on, my group and another group decided to hold back and wait out the storm, and we had to quickly figure out where to safely do so.  This photo was taken at the water stop where we were parked next to a couple of horses in their field.

Here’s something else to know about the Midwest:  if you’re not on THE main road going through farmland, you’re either on someone’s very long driveway or on a road that just leads deeper into a field of corn, and really goes nowhere in particular.  We were on one of these roads for the water stop and there were only two houses around us.  The first one did not answer when we knocked, so we back tracked up the road (enjoying the brief tailwind that carried us maybe a quarter of a mile back) to another house across the street.  We designated a teammate to knock on the door to see if anyone was home, and then we’d ask if we could simply stand in their barn to avoid the storm that was about to hit.  Three kids answered the door – two girls who were probably late middle school aged and a boy who was in late elementary school.  They texted their mom to tell her “some bikers are here and they want to take cover from the rain in our barn.”  About 45 minutes later when their mom came home, she walked to the barn to see them with us and breathed a sigh of relief to see that it was cyclists and not a Harley Davidson gang.  We spent the time riding out the storm in the barn with the kids, who talked to us about the sports they played the 4H camp they just went to.  Going to school AND working on a farm with your family apparently makes you incredibly mature for your age, as these three siblings were.  They also had a border collie who was SO CUTE and she hung out with us while we waited for the storm to pass.

Finally, the storm passed and we were ready to go.  Of course, as soon as we got back on our bikes, we saw a storm brewing in this distance.  This time it looked more like tornado weather, as some of the clouds looked like they were in the beginning stages of spiraling toward the ground.  It was so bizarre to be riding and feel spurts of warm and cold wind coming from the storm.

Somehow though, we managed to slip past it.  We found the Ohio sign, and since Kellie and I didn’t get a photo when we first crossed into the state, we took one here:

But wouldn’t ya know it, there was no sign for Indiana when we crossed into the new state.  Figures.

The host van set up lunch in the parking lot of a funeral home.  You get used to breaking for lunch in strange places on this trip.  As we settled in and started to eat our lunch, dark rain clouds quickly came our way and we had to make moves hastily to get all the food under the front porch of the funeral home before everything got drenched.  This is a photo of Jessie and I sitting on this porch.  I’m well aware that my hand is in the photo, but when I showed Jessie, she said “You know what? Leave it.” because it was reflective of the day we were having – nothing was going as planned.

It finally stopped raining, and here we were at about 2:00 having only completed just over 50 miles of a 100 mile day.  There was just no way we were going to make it.  Some of the team was trying to calculate the speed at which we had to go for the next daylight hours to make it to the host and complete the century ride.  They figured we needed to ride straight at about 23 mph without any stops to make it – ain’t gonna happen.  Even still, some people were arguing that they wanted to go on and make it to the host.  Not many were arguing, but it’s still notable that some people wanted to continue, namely Adam.  I say his name because this comes back later in the story of this day.  His bike was already on the van because his group had to be picked up and brought to lunch so they could catch up, since one of his teammates got multiple flat tires.  However, he was refusing to get in the van and argued that he should be allowed to ride, despite our conclusion that we should get as many people vanned to the host as possible right then and there.

It took us ABSOLUTELY FOREVER to make a decision about what to do and who should ride.  We knew we needed to start shuttling people to the host, which would be about an hour drive from where we were at lunch.  How to coordinate the two vans to shuttle people was the tricky part.  We have 15 passenger vans, which works out because we have 30 people, but the vans also have to carry all of our duffle bags, backpacks, food, water, and other general team gear.  It’s not quite as easy as just having everyone get in the vans, especially since we also cannot fit 30 bikes on the roof racks.  The host van had to take all of the duffle bags and a couple of people to the host church, and the water van needed to pack in as many people as possible and fit as many bikes as possible so that shuttling later in the day would be easier and take less time.  I initially decided to get in the van because the last seat was not taken, and we really needed to fill the van so that there were fewer people to shuttle later.  But almost as soon as I made that decision, Halle realized that her tire had a flat, and so it made more sense for her to get in the van and take care of it at a later time.  This was the second time that day that I’d believed I was getting in the van, and then it ended up not happening (the first was when we were in the barn taking shelter – I thought the day might be over then).  It’s extremely difficult to relieve yourself of the mental drive and energy to bike, only to realize that, no, your day is not done and you have to ride more – indefinitely more, since we weren’t actually sure of where we’d be getting picked up.  We certainly weren’t going to make it to the host, but we would get picked up sometime around 6:00, they said.

So we were back on the bike.  I was in a small team now with just Brett and Sean because Kellie went with another group.  We had to split up the original groups a little so that we had at least 3 people riding together, since the number of riders had dropped.  I was leading our group, and less than 2 miles after we had started biking, I heard Sean yell to me “stopping!” from a distance that was further than I thought he was from me.  I looked back to see three riders – one additional rider that I was unaware was with us.  It was Adam.  He had convinced the van drivers to let him go and he had caught up to us.  However, he was also the reason why we were stopping.  He had broken a spoke on his wheel.  I’m not sure if you’ve ever heard this phrase before, but “karma is a b****.”  Unfortunately though, it seemed as though we were wrapped up in this karma, too.  So we sat with him as the van had to come pick him up.  HE SHOULD’VE JUST STAYED IN THE VAN IN THE FIRST PLACE.

After dealing with the millionth road block of the day, we finally had some good luck.  We got back on our bikes and within a quarter mile from where we stopped with Adam, there was a go-kart center that was open.  We didn’t even hesitate – we all put out our right arms to signal our turn into this park and another group followed shortly behind us.  We had a blast racing against one another and forgetting all the exhausting events that had led up to this day.

We thought about getting back on our bikes, but we then got a call from Jessie, who was in the ride group that had left from lunch ahead of us.  She said “We’re horribly lost.  Just stay where you are because it’s not worth it.  The van will pick you up after they get us.”  This was the best thing we’d heard all day.  In a matter of seconds, someone had found the nearest bar, which was ironically across the street from where we’d had lunch a couple of miles back.  We rode faster than we’d ridden all day, with the winds coming from behind us now to give us the boost we needed.  It was a Mexican restaurant that had drink specials, a clean and fun atmosphere, and the women’s World Cup playing on the big screen.  It was heaven.

In the GroupMe, Jessie’s team had posted the following photo with the caption “we surrender,” saying that they were surrendering to this unbelievable day:

In response, we posted this photo with the caption “we surrender too, this sucks so much…”: (yes, that’s me in the back sippin’ on a margarita)

After several drinks and laughs about the day, we got picked up by the van and it took nearly an hour to drive to the host.  We got in very late, but at least the day had taken a turn for the better.  Overall, this will certainly be one of the most memorable days of this trip.

Day 12 – Columbus, OH to Dayton, OH

June 11th:

I’m really behind with blogging, the days are starting to run together in my head, and I don’t think I’ve been sleeping more than 5 hours a night.  But I’m gonna try to do some catching up…

I rolled out in a team with Adam, Amanda, Holy and Jo.  Jo and I have ridden three days in a row and it’s been great!  The day was supposed to be about 80 miles, but as usual we ended up doing more because we got lost for a little bit.  I’m really surprised by how much of this ride has been on trails and greenway.  Of course, being that I have the only true road bike of the team (while everyone else has more like cyclocross bikes), I much prefer the paved greenways to the gravely and sandy trails.  Everyone rides much faster on greenways, so the day usually goes by much faster.  We spend most of the day on a paved greenway, which always allows for more games to be played and conversation to be had.  We played the hot seat game where we ask each other questions, and we went relatively fast for most of the day.  You might be asking yourself “how does one get lost on a greenway?”  It’s quite difficult, really, but we somehow managed to do it.  On this greenway, we saw several signs for tractor crossings, so you can imagine how rural it was.

Jo learned how to bike with no hands!  When you have the whole “road” to yourself, it’s safer to learn these skills.

After lunch…

…we kept riding on the same greenway we’d been on all day.  We found a train that said Baltimore & Ohio on it!  Obviously, we had to take some photos here.

We took a left turn on the greenway when we should have made it right turn, but we saw this cool graffiti because of it.

We got back on the correct path which took us directly into downtown Dayton.  We rode along the river for a bit, and right as we were riding by the fountain in the middle of the river, these giant sprinklers started to shoot up and toward the fountain and over the greenway.  We also found those sprinklers that shoot up out of the ground that you were obsessed with as a kid, and Kendra got right on in it.  Adam rode through on his bicycle and fell over because the ground was slippery.  He’s fine, but his ego might be a little bruised.

When we got to the church, I found some of my teammates in a deep sleep – the kind that can only result from a long day of biking in the hot summer sun.

We got showers at a local high school and then headed over to the president of the local Rotary club’s house.  He lived in a huge, intricately designed house that everyone called “the tree house.”  It felt strange to show up in our 4K tshirts, athletic shorts, and running shoes, with most of us still feeling gross and sweaty because the showers were subpar and we had to rush through them.  They served us sushi and other fancy delicious foods that peasants like us never thought we would see on a trip like this.

There was a massive Saint Bernard, which everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) would comment to me “hey, this dog is bigger than YOU!!”  I don’t take kindly to these comments.  When the owner told everyone that the dog was 180 pounds, I let everyone know that the dog was likely bigger than them, too.  Just for comparison, though, I took a photo of my hand over the dog’s paw.  Also notice the tan line on my hand from my gloves.

   

Day 11 – Service Day in Columbus, OH

Day 11: Service day in Columbus, OH

June 10^th:

On this service day, we gave away a scholarship to a young adult affected by cancer.  Without going into too much detail, as I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to share outside of 4K for Cancer, this young woman applied for a 4K scholarship because she spent her final year of high school battling leukemia.  Young adults are able to obtain scholarships by sharing their story in essay form through an application process.  The 4K office as well as some designated members of each ride or run team review these applications and choose winners, who we then meet up with along our route to present the scholarship to.  We met her and her mom in a park in Columbus, where we heard more about her story from her mom’s perspective and we got to hear from the cancer survivor herself while eating lunch together in the park.  She was a great reminder of why we’re doing what we’re doing this summer!

In the evening, we went to a charity fundraiser for Navigator, which works alongside programs like the Ulman Cancer Fund for Young Adults to provide one-on-one support services to those going through cancer treatment.  It was an event in downtown Columbus in a venue called Vue, and they charged ticket fee to get in and eat dinner there, as well as bid on auction items for which the proceeds would go toward the Navigators fundraising.  It was quite coincidental that two 4K for Cancer teams, including us and Team Seattle, would be in town on this day, so they invited us to come free of charge.  We had quite the presence, as each team has around 30 people.  We all wore our blue 4K for Cancer t-shirts, so we certainly stood out in those.  They had great food, awesome beer from a local start-up brewery in Columbus, and entertainment.

       

One of our teammates, Halle Stephens, is a very talented singer, songwriter, and guitarist, and she loves having the opportunity to perform. She decided she would like to play one of the songs she wrote, which we all know fairly well at this point because we’ve asked her to play it for us many times.  She also has a couple of songs on iTunes, and since some of us have downloaded these songs, we’ve listened to them on van rides as well!  We encouraged her to get up there and play for everyone, and as usual she gave a great performance.  To show our support of her, we all decided to go on stage with her during the last part of the song to sing and dance with her!

I have to say, we brought more fun to this event than Team Seattle did.  If you looked at their team, they were mostly just sitting and talking with one another.  If you looked at our team, we were either dancing or singing or laughing or getting on stage to dance.  We later had a dance battle between the teams and it was very evident that we won.

   

It was a pleasure to get to meet Doug Ulman, the founder of the Ulman Cancer Fund for Young Adults.  He spoke at the event and was nearly in tears as he expressed the overwhelming sense of accomplishment and happiness seeing two teams of incredible young adults riding for the charity he started years ago.  We were honored to meet him and to take some pictures with him, including a couple of really sneaky selfies with Flora.

We’re a weird team so we decided it would be funny to pick up Doug in the photo.

And here’s one last photo with both Team Portland and Team Seattle.

Day 10 – Athens, OH to Columbus, OH

June 9^th:

Since it was our first day over 90 miles (it was listed as a 93 mile ride on the queue sheet), we woke up at 4am so we could be on the road by 6am.  It’s always better to get as much mileage done in the morning as possible because the hot summer sun isn’t nearly as excruciating as it is in the afternoon.  In fact, when we were outside getting ready to roll out a little before 6:00, most of us scrambled at the last minute to dig out our arm warmers or rain jackets from our duffle bags to keep us warm.  I was excited about my riding group for that day: Kyle, Jo, Emma, and Sarah G.

Just about the first thing we did was climb a hill.  It was a long, steep one through the college town of Athens.  We had just flown down it the day before as we made our way from the biking greenway to the church, and now we were heading back to the greenway.  As you know, I’m on a cross-country bike trip, in which our overall end destination is Portland, Oregon.  Overall, we are heading west across the country.  Why would there ever be a need to backtrack?  Why would we go back in the direction of where we came the day before?  Doesn’t that negate our efforts from the previous day?  These are all questions we asked ourselves to justify the direction that we headed on the greenway.  But guess what?  We were wrong.  It was 6am, and on maybe the 3^rd turn of the 93 mile day, we had screwed up big time.  Recall that the program we’re riding with is called 4K for Cancer.  This means that we’re riding 4,000+ miles for young adults affected by cancer.  This does not mean, however, that the country is precisely 4,000 miles wide from Baltimore to Portland.  It’s probably more like 2500, if I had to guess.  That means we have to make up the additional 1500 miles or so by taking a convoluted route, which will sometimes takes us back in the direction we came.  We found this out the hard way.

I guess I’m just being dramatic.  We went maybe 4-5 miles down this greenway trail before we realized “hey, isn’t this back on the Ohio University campus where we stayed at a host church last night?”  Strangely enough, this wasn’t the red flag for us, although it may have been if we weren’t all still in the process of waking up.  Instead, what made us stop was the fact that there was a detour on the greenway because of construction.  This caused us to call our ride director, Kendra, who was navigating for us in the van that day.  When she said “uh, I think you guys went in the wrong direction,” I felt defeated, and this was only a little before 7:00am.  What would have happened, though, if that construction detour had not been there?  We likely would have kept going for who knows how long!  Yikes.

I hadn’t had coffee because it wasn’t provided at the church (which is fine, we are very thankful for a place to stay and their hospitality – however, I NEED MY COFFEE) and my head was throbbing because I may or may not be addicted to caffeine.  Luckily, we weren’t the only group to make that wrong turn, so we didn’t feel like complete idiots, but we already knew that our 93 mile day would easily turn into our first century ride of the 4K summer.  It wasn’t exactly an exciting revelation.

  

BUT HEY – we got to see the fog of the early morning hovering over the field that the greenway twisted and turned through.  So that was nice.

We turned around and proceeded onward.  My legs felt heavy, and I was lethargic, pessimistic, and cranky.  I tried to keep my mouth shut because I didn’t have anything positive to say that morning, and I didn’t want my teammates to get annoyed with me that early in the day.  We finally made it to the first water stop, where one of our awesome van drivers had purchased COFFEE out of their own pockets for us!!!!!!!!! I was thrilled.  I threw it back and felt a million times better when we hopped back on our bikes and continued on with our day.

There’s a game that some people have been playing on the bike called “hot seat,” which is not so much a game as it is a conversation starter.  Basically, someone is put in the hot seat and you can ask them anything you want.  To help formulate questions, we’ve been going through the alphabet and asking them questions with a focus on the letter A, B, C… I think we’re all familiar with the alphabet.  Anyway, you can obviously make this game as innocent or as not-so-innocent as you would like, but Jo and I decided to ask each other “clean” questions that helped us get to know one another better.  I’ve had the privilege of riding with the kind, quiet Jo for the past 2 ride days and it was nice to be on a road this day that allowed us to have conversation.  We decided we’d put each other in the hot seat, meaning that we’d think of a question and both of us would answer.  So for example, the first question was “who is your best amigo/amiga (friend)?”  When we got to the letter D, we asked “what is the worst dental procedure you’ve ever had?”  So you see, it’s a good conversation starter!  An hour passed so quickly while we were playing this game – it made the day more bearable.

The day was full of ups and downs.  We had to ride on a busy highway for a little bit of, and none of us were thrilled about it.  At one point I took a bathroom break and lost my phone in the process, causing me to panic until Emma was my savior and found it laying in the grass on the side of the road where we had pulled off.  We made it to some back country roads again and saw this really weird and creepy eagle statue in a park that was peculiarly placed immediately beside the highway.  I have no idea what this statue signifies, but these are the kinds of things you stop to take photos with along the ride.

The second water stop was shortly thereafter.  We found ourselves veering away from the quiet, country roads as we headed closer to the city of Columbus.  I was thankful to be with a group that had good communication and that was riding safely.  Before lunch, we took a road that was closed off to cars, but over the course of the trip we’ve decided that road closures are really just suggestions for bicycles, as we can usually shimmy our way through the construction zone.  In this case, the reason the road was closed was because of a huge tree that must have fallen over the road.  It was clear that work had been done to cut up the trunk and all its branches, but no car could get past it.  Typically if we’re riding in a pack and you see a hole, bump, gravel, etc. in the road, you call it out so that the next person immediately behind you can avoid it.  So for example, you’d call out “hole right!” so that the person behind you knows they need to glide to the left just a little bit.  We took a photo at the tree in the road and sent it to the GroupMe (team’s group text message) with the caption “STICK RIGHT!”

We passed by some horses after that, and some of us think we’re horse whisperers, so…

We eventually made it to lunch where we stopped for about an hour, and I decided more coffee would help me get through the remainder of the ride.  Emma and I went to a German coffee shop.  I don’t know if “German coffee” is a thing, but I believe they also served some German pastries or food or something.  Many things were written in German.

We only had about 30 miles left after lunch, but the word “only” always underestimates how hard it will actually be.  We were feeling great as a team, and we had energy to keep going, but it was about to get busier on the roads into Columbus and it was creeping up on 5pm rush hour.  We found ourselves on roads that I would never choose to ride on myself, but we safely navigated our way into the city.  I am not a city cyclist – that’s for damn sure.  I nearly lost my voice from being in the back of the pack and calling out directions, car left, car back, watch for car doors, clear behind, bus right, slowing, stopping, green light… etc.  It’s hectic and exhausts me more so than booking it on a quieter country road.  For the last 5 miles or so, we found ourselves intertwined with all the other groups for the day, which inexperienced riders see as fun and exciting to be all together for the last part of the day, but it is INCREDIBLY UNSAFE to ride in a pack of more than 5 or 6 people.  When you’re spread out so much on a road that no cars can pass you, you are essentially taking up a whole lane.  This is okay if it’s not rush hour and if there is more than one lane for cars to pass you on, but when you are on a two lane road (and we were for a little while), drivers get angry and it doesn’t make sense to be on their bad side.  Road rage is real, and people do insane things in this state of anger.  Remembering that a cyclist will never win against a car driver is important, but not all my teammates choose to be humbled by this fact, so we kept riding in a chaotic and unorganized pack with no successful communication between riders happening.  It was a disappointing way to end a ride that had been so great!  I wanted to be more excited about completing the first 100 mile ride of the trip, but it was overshadowed by the stress levels that continued to be elevated when we arrived.  But we did it!  (this is Jo’s bike computer — I don’t have a bike computer, if you’re wondering):

It was then a hurry up and wait to use the only two showers in the host church.  I lazily laid around waiting for my turn.  We then shuttled over to Zach’s (our ride director) uncle’s house just outside of Columbus, where we had a huge feast of summer cook out foods!  They called it a barbeque, and since I’m the resident southerner on the team (although you wouldn’t believe it with how infrequently I use the ubiquitous southern word “y’all” and instead stick with the northern “you guys”), I explained that in the south, barbeque is something you eat, not an event where you serve hamburgers and hot dogs.  I’m vegetarian though, so really I’m a sad representation of southern culture anyway.

I met Zach’s uncle’s dog, Ren, and we became best friends when I threw her stick and she fetched it.

Some of us went to a local bar later that night and had a good time, but even so I regretted going because I was incredibly tired from being up since 4am that morning.  At least we had a service day scheduled in Columbus the next day!  That means we could sleep in at least a little bit.  And I least I got to see Brett lose “what are the odds” and have to challenge a random dude in a tank top to an arm wrestling match, which he obviously won.

Day 9 – Zanesville, OH to Athens, OH

June 8^th:

We rolled out from the church at around 7:30 to begin our “short” 60 mile ride day.  This is just a photo of the bikes as they usually look inside a host church.

We had been told by many locals and members of the church where we had spent the night in Zanesville that bad weather was on its way.  We were prepared with rain jackets and even a layer or two to keep warm, since many of us had already experienced riding in the cold, rainy conditions this week (see blog post from Day 3).  Looking at the radar, it seemed that riding through the storms would be inevitable.  However, we somehow managed to dodge it altogether.  It drizzled just ever so slightly on our ride, causing us to all put on our rain coats in fear of the worst, but it passed quickly.

I spent the day riding with Gino, Jo, Julia, and Lizzy.  Our team name was Team Introspective because we didn’t talk much of the morning, but instead rode in silence.  It was windy, though, so it would’ve been hard to hear each other anyway.  The morning ride started off easy enough, but as we moved along the rolling hills got harder.

Some of our team members had not gotten a hay bale photo the day before, so we stopped take one!

Shortly after this, we were chased by a dog that had been barking at us and watching us the whole time while we were stopped.  Many of you are aware that getting chased by a dog is one of my biggest fears while riding my bike.  It’s really not fun at all.

The van drivers have started to chalk messages to us on the road (if you recall, it was me that started this trend!).  Sometimes they are inspirational, sometimes they are funny, and sometimes they warn of a hill to come.  We rounded a corner and in the distance saw a steep hill.  We looked down and saw that Matt, our navigator, had written “have fun!” on the road.  The hill was SO STEEP and it caught all of us off guard.  As I made it to the top, I saw another team that had stopped at the top.  They had stopped at a curve, where I couldn’t see around the corner.  As I got closer to them, they said “Read the chalk…” at which point I looked down and saw “ONE MORE TIME” written on the road as I rounded the corner.   In the distance was another huge hill.  It was comical and defeating all at the same time.  I waited for my teammates to meet me at the top of the first hill before we tackled the next one (which never looks as bad in a photo as it does in person):

There were a couple more of these tough hills to conquer before making it to lunch, where we were rewarded with one of our best views yet!

We ate and then we were on our way.  While the length and the steepness of hills decreased in the second half of the day, the rolling hills became more… rolly?  If you weren’t going down, you were going up.  It was more exhausting than I was expecting the second half of the day to be.  There was some miscommunication with where the second water stop of the day would be, so we didn’t stop again until we got to the host, which is fine with me because I always find the water stops to be excessive and they just slow you down.

We rode on the greenway before getting into Athens, OH.

I was hoping to find a sports bar in this college town to go watch the Women’s National Soccer team play in their first World Cup game against Australia tonight, but we had a team meeting instead.  I dedicated about 15 years of my life to this sport, so not being able to watch it really pissed me off, especially because my favorite player, Megan Rapinoe, scored two goals in the USA’s 3-1 win! AGH.  I hope you all watched the game for me.  SUPPORT THE USWNT, Y’ALL!!!

We all headed to bed early, knowing we had a 4am wake up call for our longest riding day coming up!

Day 8 – New Philadelphia, OH to Zanesville, OH

Before I start blogging about Day 8, I want to finish up Day 7!  I submitted my blog post before the events of the day had ended.  I was working on my blog alongside some of my teammates at a local coffee shop in New Philadelphia called the Daily Grind. Suddenly at around 7:50pm, Jessie came over to our table and said “GUYS, there’s some sort of fair or amusement park or something in town but it closes at 9 so we’re leaving NOW!”  We weren’t really sure what she was talking about, but we decided to go.  The town basically has a permanent fair in their park, and the tickets for the rides are pretty cheap.  We somehow managed to fit 22 adult humans in a 15 passenger van, which is totally illegal.  We got to the fair and bought some tickets for the merry-go-round, the swings, the Ferris wheel, and the train.  We acted like such children and we had a blast!  As an aside, merry-go-rounds move MUCH FASTER than I remember, and I’m not totally sure why they don’t strap children onto those horses.

Okay, now onto Day 8.  We left sort of late because the church said they couldn’t provide breakfast until 8am, although we like to get on the road by 7:30.  We headed out closer to 9 and I was in a group with Lindsay, Martha, and Hannah.  We called ourselves Lindsay and the Lucky Charms (most days, your team will make a team name for that riding day).  The first half of the day was beautiful!  We were on a back road with few cars and we were able to ride two-by-two for the most part.  At the water break at about 16 miles, everyone felt like they were having a strong riding day. I had some time to talk to my teammate, Lindsay, about who she had dedicated her ride to that day.  During the dedication circle that morning, Lindsay had said “I dedicate my ride today to Sandy, and I hope to see many yellow butterflies today!” Lindsay has done both the 4K for Cancer bike ride AND run, so this is also her second time biking across the country.  One of her teammates on the run was named Lala, and Lala had a friend named Sandy who had been battling cancer.  Sandy was 11 years old, and unfortunately, she passed away while Lala and Lindsay were completing their 4K run that summer.  Lindsay explained to me that Sandy loved yellow butterflies and that when she was peacefully nearing the end of her life, she had said that she wanted to be reincarnated into a yellow butterfly.  Lindsay told me about how after Sandy had passed away, Lala would frequently have yellow butterflies land on her while she was running.  Lindsay opened up to me and told me this story after we had seen a yellow butterfly fly out in front of us while riding.  We even rode by a winery called “Yellow Butterfly.” We got a hay bale photo on this ride!  They look like giant marshmallows. Lindsay actually had to be picked up by the van right before lunch because one of her pedals fell off and she needed to get it replaced before she could ride again.  Martha, Hannah and I all felt great by the time we got to lunch, but we had all noticed the wind had picked up quite a bit.  We decided to paceline on the next road just to get through it.  Our eyes must have been too focused on the road in front of us because we missed the “World’s Largest Basket” on the side of the road that day.  I’m not kidding — it’s apparently an attraction in Ohio.  Who knew? Another pacelining team caught up to us, so we spent the rest of the afternoon with them.  Being on a back country road was great because there were few cars, but the road itself was full of cracks, potholes, and bumps. After the second water break, we were on a mission to find access to the river to go swimming.  We did find a spot to go, but after watching a couple of my teammates slide (and fall) into the water, only to be engulfed by the mucky and thick mud of the river floor.  That was a deal breaker for me.  I watched some of my teammates slop around in the mud for a while before we headed back to our bikes to finish the remainder of our ride. We made it to Zanesville a little after 4:00 after riding on a bike path for a couple of miles. I have a friend that lives in Zanesville!  Kevin O’Brien and I served an AmeriCorps term with Habitat for Humanity of Charlotte, NC during the year after I did Bike & Build.  It was so good to see him and catch up with him!  He took me to a local ice cream shop, and then he drove me around town so I could see where he grew up. Overall, the morning was wonderful, the afternoon was tougher, and I got to catch up with a friend… great day!

Day 7 – East Liverpool, OH to New Philadelphia, OH

My first day in the van.  On Bike & Build, we had 4 leaders who all rotated their van driving days, so I was never responsible for finding the lunch spot or supporting the riders along the route.  On 4K, everyone has to drive in the van some days, either in the water van or the host van.  The water van is responsible for – shocker – providing water for the riders.  They are also responsible for navigating and chalking the route before the riders come along.  We have the queue sheet for the day, and we go ahead of the team and chalk arrows on the road to direct the riders.  We’ll have water breaks usually twice a day, although on this particular day it was a shorter ride of about 56 miles, so we only had one water break and one lunch break.  The host van is responsible for getting lunch/dinner or whatever food the team needs for the day.  They go to various restaurants or grocery stores in the area and ask for food donations, which are tax deductible for that business.  So on this day, Kevin was the driver and I was the navigator, and both of us in the water van.  He looks super thrilled to be with me in this photo of us in the van:

This one is slightly better:

I was told my chalking skills were on point today!  I think I’ve won the Best Chalker Award (thus far) by unanimous vote from my teammates.  At the end of the ride, my teammate Jessie said “KIM when you get out of that van I’m going to hug you!” because it was the first day she didn’t get lost with her team.  I wrote words of encouragement up a big hill to the first water stop, including things like “YOU ARE SO CLOSE” and “YOU ARE AWESOME.”  Only one team got lost briefly, but they acknowledged that it was their fault and was not reflective of my chalking ability.  I’M AN EXCELLENT CHALKER, and the world should know.

That being said, I’d rather be on my bike.