I guess I'll just go day by day to explain things:
Day 1 Baltimore-Waynesboro, PA
Day one started out bright and early at around 5:30 AM! Of course, however, things were running late and we didn't end up biking to the inner harbor until closer to 7. So basically everyone on the team was just standing around, really nervous and apprehensive, just wanting to go. Finally, we did start biking, as a caravan. This means that all 27 of us form two lines of bikes with a van in front of us and one in back. This keeps us safe when biking as a large group through major cities. It was pretty cool because we function as one vehicle, meaning if the front van goes through a green light which subsequently turns red, then we all go through the red light. Pretty sweet. The smooth biking was soon interupted by a number of potholes, one of which I hit pretty hard. This gave me the distinction of the team's first flat tire. Rather than having to waste a long time changing the tire, though, and being late to the inner harbor, one of the alumni was nice enough to switch the tire with the one off his bike. Down at the inner harbor, we had our opening ceremony. A couple people (our directors, an American Cancer Society rep, and people from the organizations we benefit) spoke briefly. And then everyone dipped their back tire into the inner harbor in Baltimore. In two months, we will perform this action's counterpart, by dipping our front tires in the Pacific ocean in San Francisco.
I left the inner harbor with a group of a couple other girls. We soon named ourselves Team Disaster due to our propensity for falls and flat tires. All in all, we ended up with four flats, a couple falls, and a host of other bike maintenance issues. But we still made it to the end. It was definitely a real struggle. By about fifty miles in, I was pretty exhausted. I hadn't realized quite how much we need to eat when we bike as much as we do, which probably played a small part. But the directors on our trip were really awesome and made me eat more and wouldn't let us quit for the day. One of the highlights of the biking was passing the Pennsylvania state line. We took some pictures which I'll get around to posting later. We biked into the church we stayed at as the sun was setting around 8 and ate a ridiculous amount of food and pretty much went right to sleep.
Day 2 and 3: Waynesboro to Bedford, Beford to Greensburg
This was another extremely tough day. It brought our first real mountains. It is this day that makes me laugh at some of the things I used to consider big hills. The first twenty miles were pretty easy, but we soon hit James Buchanan Mountain, which just seemed to keep going forever. It took ages but we did make it to the top. Looking down from the top, it blew my mind to see how far I had gone with my bike. I took some pictures at the top, which sort of show how high it seemed (below).
The day contuned with another even bigger mountain, which was I felt pretty good about myself for getting over. However, in the afternoon, I started feeling pretty sick. My skin started to feel like it was on fire all over from the sun. After arriving at our host, this feeling didn't go away. I wasn't sunburned at all, but it felt like my skin was boiling from a couple layers underneath. I tried to sleep it off but woke up the next morning with my lips swollen to three times their normal size. The 4k Director took me to a local hospital where they gave me prednesone for an allergic reaction(which is probably the nastiest tasting drug ever). Anyway, I ended up driving the support van on day 3 because I probably wasn't in any shape to bike. I still felt horrible all day, which is really what made me question whether I would be able to do the ride.
Day 4: Greensburg to Butler, PA
Day 4 should have been the first easy day of the trip. I was feeling much much better from whatever had been making me sick and the ride was short, at just around 60 miles on much flatter terrain than the previous days. And it started out very nicely. It was chilly, but that was nice for biking. My group made a short detour on the interstate, which was a little scary. We had missed our turn and were confused about why the cars were going so fast and about why we were supposed to go through a tunnel. (You shouldn't bike thrgough tunnnels). However, a very nice city worker came along and threw our bikes in the back of his truck and drove us off the interstate.
My group still made good time, which we were grateful for later in the day. Because a little past lunch the temperature dropped drastically and the torrential rains started. Now, we bike in all whether except lightning, and there was no lightning, so we biked on. Everyone was frozen and soaked. Going down hills was terrifying because it is much much harder to brake in the rain. We stopped at our last water stop for less than five minutes, because we just wanted to get there so badly and didn't want to give ourselves the chance to cool off. Today was the first time I actually preferred the uphills to downhills, because I at least felt a little warmer on the uphills. My group made it in, soaked and cold and went right to the showers provided by the local YMCA. I had never been so thankful for a warm shower in my life. And we also discovered that you can use the bathing spin driers at the YMCA to dry your spandex, so we didn't have to deal with damp spandex the next morning.
This was also the day we met one of the most fantastic people of the trip yet. One of the groups was struggling pretty hard with the day. It just kept getting colder and wetter and the drivers around Pittsburgh were the rudest ones yet. They all honk or yell at cyclists and don't make any effort to leave any space. One woman driving along saw this group struggling and asked if she could escort them to their destination. So for about the last ten miles of the ride she rode behind them with her flashers making sure they stayed safe. She stayed and talked with us all for a little while and it definitely meant a lot for the team that she would take an hour out of the day just to make sure some random bikers stayed safe.
Day 5: Butler, PA to Youngstown, OH
This was officially the first easy day of the trip! I actually wrote the team blog entry for today and I don't feel like writing it again, so here's the link to the team blog:
http://4kforcancer2009.blogspot.com/
Day 6: Youngstown to Cleveland, OH
Another pretty easy ride. It was 71 miles but still pretty flat. (Wow, I never would have imagined calling over 70 miles an "easy" ride). The only real issue biking was the excessive number of potholes on Ohio's roads. I took one pretty bad fall because of a pothole. I just hit a pothole at a weird angle and my bike flew forward into the girl's in front of me. My handlebars got stuck in her tire spokes! And I flew a sideways into the road. I'm glad I was wearing my helmet because I hit my head pretty hard on the road and was dizzy for a few minutes. And my knee looked like a piece of raw meat from the way it got scraped. Plus, I got some blood on my pedal. Again there were also some more rude drivers. I don't understand why drivers driving in the other lane, going the opposite direction to us, get so offended at the existence of cyclists. One of them yelled at us "Get the F*** off the road!"
We caravaned into Cleveland, just like we had done in Baltimore and we are now staying at Case Western Reserve University. We're in beds in dorm rooms, which is pretty sweet. I'm hoping to do laundry today and to just enjoy a real day of resting. Hooray!
Conclusions!
So yeah, exciting week. My legs are bruised from my shins to my butt and I hurt in muscles I never knew I had. But I eat easily double what I do at home which is completely awesome and I'm getting to see all sorts of cute little towns and farms and places that I never would have seen from interstates or an airplane. I'll try to update again next time I have internet, but I'm not sure when that will be!
Soory for the rude drivers, I get that from some in my Geo Metro Convertible, guess everyone needs to chill, Marty in NE Ohio
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