Today was a little frustrating at first, but as the day went on, the frustration started to get better.
We woke up at 5, got ready, and had a crew chief breakfast. Today was suppose to be a long day, starting with a century ride.
We headed out as soon as we can, especially with the rack point being 90 miles by 12:30 PM. Jorge asked if I wanted to be in his paceline, and I didn’t want to be rude, so I joined: that was my big mistake of the day. We were joined with Jon (RIT) and Tucker (Iowa State). In order to make rack point, we had to go constantly fast, at least 17 mph…a realistic goal, but a challenge nonetheless. We headed out, taking turns of 3 mile pulls. When it was Jorge’s turn, we went ridiculously slow, like at 10 mph on flats. Obviously, we would not make rack point at that speed. So I made the on-the-spot decision to pull for like 40 miles straight. It was tough, but we were moving at a speed that could take us there. After mile 60, I was getting a little tired, and getting to the realization that racking was inevitable. I tried to push Jorge as much as I can, but it gets annoying when he yells “slow down” every minute. I ended up losing my patience more than once, but seriously, that kid wants to get racked…why did he join this trip if he didn’t want to work. Today was a manageable day. We didn’t finish because we chose not too, laziness. We ended up getting to the 80 mile mark before having to finish. We had 20 more miles, and we would be there. It was the first time on the trip that I had to rack, not due to weather constraints or bike problems.
At the road side crew lunch, I gulped down lunch, and we drove off to lodging. We were staying at a pretty nice Lutheran church, which had a well equipped basketball gym. After showering up, we headed to the friendship visit, which was at the local bowling alley. There were a ton of people to greet us, most with the organization called Independence First. Although I was having a pretty frustrating day at that point, and felt pretty down about racking, I instantly had a smile once I saw all the warm hearts of the people around us in the bowling alley. You could tell that they loved us. The participants in this organization were children with physical disabilities. They were all pretty smart and talented. Some participated in races and obstacle course in Chicago last week, and finished first in their division.
We bowled for a few hours and they provided us a snack platter. I bowled with the children of the person who ran it all, Kathy. Here sons, Jacob and Nathan, helped out and were currently in middle school. We talked a little and I got my mind off of this morning and Jorge. Overall, it was a lot of fun. I got a pretty high score, 86 and 84, but in fairness, I had bumpers.
After the friendship visit, we had dinner at a yacht club provided by the Davidson family. Now, the Davidson family owns the company, Harley Davidson (maybe you’ve heard of it), and were direct descendants of Harley Davidson. I thought it was funny that they were totally a yachting-type family and I could never see them on a bike. They were really nice and provided us some pulled pork sandwiches. After playing some bocce ball and cornhole, we headed back to the gym, where we had the rest of the night off. After wandering around for a little bit, we saw a room filled with sports equipment including lacrosse sticks and hockey sticks. We all of it out to the gym and started playing some floor hockey. Man, I never have had so much fun. I was deke-ing people left and right, and sniping with no mercy. I taught a couple teammates to do wrist shots, and just had a lot of fun. It was cool to see everyone get into it, I think we had half the team playing hockey.
After exhausting ourselves playing hockey, we did a quick upper body workout before heading to bed, we get to sleep in until 7 tomorrow.
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