Cleveland, Ohio

The fact that today is August 1st is absolutely mind blowing. I left Knoxville to start my trip on May 31st and now three months later I am back on the east coast and only 10 days from arriving in Washington D.C. and I know back in May I know I wouldn't have been feeling half of the emotions that I am right now. At this point I am extremely excited to ride up to the Capitol and see my family but at the same time I want to turn around and go back to California with my teammates. We have created so many memories and have had so much fun together than going separate way is going to extremely difficult.

After a fantastic day in Sandusky it was time to make our way to the next big city on our trip, Cleveland. We woke up around 6:00 and immediately racked our bikes on the vans. Breakfast was at a restaurant out of the way of our ride so it would have taken to long to ride to it. We got to our breakfast location which was Berardi's Restaurant. When we walked in the hostess took us to a back room and then served us. On the plates was two huge pieces of French Toast and bacon. The meal was absolutely fantastic and it was the perfect way to start the day. While at the table the 4 guys I sat with were laughing the whole time. We found ourselves going back to our teammates old Facebook pictures and seeing how everyone has changed. Also while sitting there I was talking to Spencer about the days ride and he told me about the rack point we had for the day. If we wanted to make it to Cleveland on the bikes without getting racked we would have to keep a pace of about 38 mph, so obviously that wasn't going to happen.

Travis and I after our ride 

We drove over to a park and then took the bikes off the vans so we could start our ride. Today I rode with Travis Turner from Georgia Tech and because of the tight rack point we weren't to worried about going fast. Travis is one of our better riders by far but because he was feeling under the weather we talked about just taking it easy for the two hours we had to ride. We ended up riding for about 1 1/2 hours and got just over 30 miles before the crew members told us to rack which was actually a pretty fast pace. It was very nice ride for the most part while we rode along Lake Erie. After loading our bikes on the vans we drove the final way into Cleveland and arrived at our lodging location for the next two days at the Delta Gamma house at Case Western University. I was told that I have 15 minutes to get ready before we were leaving for our afternoon team activity. We drove downtown and after a struggle to find parking we arrived at Progressive Field, home of the Cleveland Indians. The game was a blast, and although it was super hot everyone had a lot of fun cheering on the home team who won in a shutout against the rival Chicago White Sox. It has been so cool to visit so many different cities this summer and go to all of these events. After leaving the game we went back to lodging to relax for a while until dinner later on.

Colin Schwartz acting like a goofball at the game

At 5:00 we left lodging once again to meet with the Shades family for dinner. Mr. and Mrs. Shade our the parents of a Pi Alpha and the roommate of our logistics coordinator Spencer. They were such loving people and it was very nice to meet them. Mrs. Shade took the role of mother while we were there and made sure everyone was staying healthy and safe. The family made us an awesome spaghetti dinner and the whole team enjoyed it. After eating everyone got up and introduced themselves and they by request we talked about what we would say to our mom if she called us right now. It was wild to hear that some of my teammates haven't called their mom's in over a week or so knowing that I talked to mine almost everyday. I think my mom would kill me before letting me get away with not talking to her on the phone for over a week.

We went back to lodging and from there the rest of the night was free. A handful of the over 21 year olds went downtown to explore the city, and a group of the minors went exploring but David and I made our own fun. We went to Walgreens and bought Nerf guns to entertain ourselves for the night. While attacking some of the guys inside the house we made our way outside to wait for some of the guys to return to the house. At one point we were hiding in the bed of a pickup truck waiting for some people to come back to ambush them. After the group of underage guys came back we were hanging out in the parking lot doing different challenges and 3 cops pulled with their lights flashing and boxed us in. I wasn't to worried because I realized we were sitting in a parking lot with Nerf guns and Sprite, but it was still weird. After talking to one of the cops he informed us that the security building saw a group of guys running around the Delta Gamma house and peeking in the windows so they thought someone was trying to break in. After some clarification the officers realized that we were staying in the house and drove away. We ended up having a lot more fun that expected and the entire day turned out to be a blast. It is days like today I am going to miss most where the team has a lot of time to hang out together. It is going to be weird going back to Knoxville and not having 34 guys to hang out with any minute of the day.