Craig, Colorado

After a long and exhausting ride the day before, everyone was a little slow getting up this morning. Wake up was at 5:30 and I was definitely not the first person to get out of bed. The morning went like normal, breakfast, circle up, and prayer. Dinosaur was a very interesting town to say the least, and although it was cool that every road was named after a dinosaur, I do not think I will be returning anytime in the near future.

I rode today with Michael Brooks from the University of Houston. We volunteered to be sweeps which means we were the last two guys to leave, and it was our job to be the last cyclist of the group on the road, and to try to keep the last guys going at a good pace. Unfortunately that did not happen though, and Brooksie and I were very frustrated because of it. We were stuck behind a group that was held back by a guy that was not having a good day, and that really affected all of us. We were told we had to ride 80 of our 85 miles by 1:30 and because of our slower guy we only made it to lunch by 1:30, which was at 70 miles. Because of this we had to rack our bikes on the vans and be taken into town. Once getting into Craig, we staged up about a block away from The Boys and Girls Club to do an arrival. The team got into a double pace line and rode into the parking lot together. All of the people of The Boys and Girls Club were outside cheering us on, and seemed very excited to see us. We enjoyed a few hours of playing outside, eating ice cream and signing lots of autographs before showering up and getting ready for our other programmed events for the night.

Before we could go to our other friendship visit everyone went over to the self-service car wash and cleaned the vans. Every van has a name, and along with 5 others, I am in van 1 and its name is the Sharktank. Every van has their own mascot as well, ours being a shark named Clark. Once we got the Sharktank spotless we went over to a park to meet up with a group called Horizons, and organization that works with people with developmental disabilities throughout the area. While there we enjoyed a great dinner, and spent some good quality time with their clients. I got particularly close with a girl named Ashleigh. She is a wonderful 20 year old who suffers from Cerebral Palsy, but by her wonderful attitude you would think she was the healthiest girl in the world. Along with one of my teammates David, we talked about the trip, the guys that were on it last year, as well as talked about how good the food was. While eating on of Horizons clients, Bob, and the women who sent up the event read us a poem. It was about how inspired they are by us, and it was very touching. After introductions the environment got a little wild. Water balloons were brought out, and some people learned whom their true friends, and even enemies were. I took cover behind a tree and managed to stay dry!

 

We ended our night back at the Boys and Girls Club and have a team meeting to talk about what is going to be happening in the next few days, as well as continue our new leadership program. Tomorrow we have a 50 mile ride, but I have a feeling it is not going to be an easy ride at all.