We woke up at 5:30. However, someone was a little late waking up, so the following day, we have to wake up a half hour earlier, and not do anything…what a waste of time.
It was pouring rain today, but all we had to do was complete 50 miles to Grand Island today. As we headed out, it was tough. It wasn’t cold, because of the humidity. In fact, it was quite stuffy. However, as we just finished our tenth mile, we saw lightning. Because of protocol, we are not allowed to ride in thunder storms, so we had to rack our bikes on the vans, and drive to Grand Island. We still had about a few hours until our arrival, so we headed to Wal-mart. As boring as it sounds, spending 3 hours at Wal-mart window shopping with no wallet handy was actually not too bad. Regardless, I was still a little irritated that we didn’t bike. I know it was for our own safely, but still, it was a little weird. I heard lunch was going to be a feast so I made sure I layed off any food at Wal-mart. 
At around 11, we hopped in our vans and headed to the Holiday Inn. It was still pouring so I guess it was a good thing we didn’t ride. However, our bikes were on the outsides of the vans, and thus, still vulnerable to any water damage.
We greeted our sponsors and met a few kids with diabilities. I met this one kid name Craig who you can tell was so happy we were here. He actually isn’t a kid, 35 years old, but hasn’t missed a Journey of Hope arrival in the past 15 years. After meeting everyone, they provided us slurpees from Sonics, which were surprisingly fruity. We also met the sponsors, whom I’ve heard so much about. They are these 3 ladies who have had multiple adoption of young kids with disabilities, and have supported Journey of Hope for the past 18 years. They’ve made Grand Island a favorite for many past Journey of Hope riders.
After a quick shower, and unpacking everything, we popped back in the vans, and drove to lunch, this time at one of the sponsors’s houses. The food was amazing…steak. When I judge a meal, its basically this: steak or no steak. I love me my protein. So when we got steak today, it was music to my ears.
Looking around at this house, they had some really cool photos of past Journey of Hope teams. They were also really big University of Nebraska football fans, and it was cool to see their excitement upon entry into the Big Ten.
After a delicious lunch, we headed to an Elk’s Lodge where we had a friendship visit. After a little more food (seriously, I ate over 4000 calories that day), we started to mingle with a few of the ARC participants, most having Down Syndrome. An hour into it, it turned into a big dance, which was a nice cardio workout to burn off all that food. The friendship visit went by a lot quicker than it seemed. We headed back to the hotel where we had a few pizzas for dinner. A few of us went down to the hotel’s pool, but didn’t stay there long as most were nodding asleep. It was a lot of food, and a lot of fun… and by my standards, I would rate this day as pretty successful.
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