Sacramento, CA to Jackson, CA

More or less the same usual wake up, except today was at a gym. Woke up at exactly 5:00 AM from the blaring music of “Party in the USA” and the eye scorching lights. Packed up and had the usual breakfast, except today, we had co-co puffs as our cereal, yummy.

We departed straight off to Jackson, CA. I decided to ride with completely different people, and I actually rode with some of the fastest people on the team. One of the members in my paceline has done 3 ironmans (if you don’t know what it is, its intense…look it up) and another has done Journey of Hope 2 years ago. It was roughly 40 miles, but we booked it, riding on average at 17 mph. Luckily, the land was pretty flat, expect at the end with elevation started to pick up. We started at the end of the pack, the last paceline. Before not to long, we started to pass one paceline and then another, sooner or later, we led the the pack, getting “red flag” way more than I usually do. A “red flag” is given to pace lines when there aren’t enough support vans ahead of them. By far, this was my best ride yet, although this was also one of the easier days.

We rode into Jackson and had lunch at a facility center for people with disabilities. It more or less was a banquet with at least 100 people total. Everyone was super friendly, and treated us like kings as we rolled in. I met a sad girl named Belany who was at one point in tears because her friend Sarah was in the hospital. I tried to get her mind off things and started talking to her, and at one point made her laugh. I felt pretty good about that.

After lunch we started to ride to another gym. During the ride, we got to the road which had the steepest road I’ve ever seen in my life…steeper than San Francisco, literally 45 degrees. I had to go into my absolute lowest gear and even needed a little push from Tanner Bacon, one of the chief directors. It was pretty good practice for tomorrow, where we ride the epic mountain Kirkwood. Tomorrow, I’ll be in Lake Tahoe, 95 miles from where I am today. At least 75 miles of those are uphill. I project that I will be riding late into the night, provided my chain doesn’t break during the ride. Many have said this is the hardest day of the trip. Am I scared? Sure. Am I nervous? You betcha. Will I finished? We’ll find out tomorrow.

Once we got to lodging, I started doing my push ups. During orientation, my team decided to do a push up for every mile we did. That’s 4000 push ups. There must be at least 10 of us doing it. I decided to up it. I’m going to finish this trip with 10,000 push ups. That means I have to start the trip by doing twice as many push ups for every mile. Half way across America, I need to do three times as many push ups. It’s a challenge, but I’m up for it.

After a short break, we had dinner prepared for us by the local Lion’s Club. The food was really great, and I had irresitable chocolate chip cookies. I’m pretty good about eating healthy, but I seriously could not stop eating these cookies. The Lions were very nice and entertaining and was a great dinner. We headed back to the gym to get a good nights sleep for a killer tomorrow.