It's past my bedtime for a second night in a row, but I just wanted to quickly ask for y'all to send prayers, positive thoughts, or good juju to the team and myself. I don't even know what day today is, but today was an especially difficult day of riding for most, if not all, of us.
If any of y'all have driving through DC, you'll remember how hard it is to navigate. Today was the same, but by bicycle. I remember driving to NY from NC with my mom one year and we hit construction and got lost. After like 30 minutes of driving around, we finally just decided to get on a road heading north and keep driving until we could get back on the highway. That's almost exactly what happened today. There was construction blocking us from getting on a bike path and so a new segment cyclist (Chandler) and I just started circling around until finally plugging it in our phones and taking turn after turn to go north until we found our way back on the map. It took like 2 hours to go 12 miles which is mighty slow on a bike.
After finding a place for lunch when we were back on track, we headed out for the hills of Maryland (which I didn't know existed). Guys and gals, there are some pretty strong climbs up into Maryland. I think I was doing really well with them, though! I was doing well until one of my spokes snapped on my back wheel.. Thanks to my route leader Duncan, we spent like 90 minutes at the last rest stop tearing my wheel apart, putting in a new spoke, true-ing the wheel, and putting it back together. I went from 2nd to last group to very dead last, but I was grateful to be able to ride at all after that and another route leader named Bob bought the team slurpees which was a good pick-me-up.
The last leg was pretty... pretty intense. We had a lot of steep(ish) climbs that got the blood flowing in the quads. At that point in the day, it was like 5:30 and so I'd been in my padded shorts for about 5 hours longer than I'd like to have been. Chaffing is a problem at that point. I spent almost the entire 2 hour last leg (yes, I got into camp at 7:30) standing out of my saddle because I didn't want to rub my butt against anything.
All in all, I've got 3 more days of riding. I was tearing up thinking about this team and how much i wish to be able to stay on my bike. Today just goes to show how little I really should be worried about in life. Stress helps nobody but happiness can cure all. I had a great day where I spent every waking second surrounded by amazing people, 6 or more hours riding my bike, and have countless memories from DC to Glyndon, MD.
Peace and love to everyone out there. Hope you're smiling through whatever stresses you might have this next week.
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