15 thoughts from the road

15 great things about the trip!

Day 1 – hanging out for the day with a childhood friend and meeting 39 people that would become like family.

Day 2 – realizing I’m actually doing this and it hurts

Day 3 – biking through washigton to Spokane, coming down onto a canyon and seeing wild horses running along the ridge.

Day 4 – Rivers of montana, beautiful state, beautiful open roads, Oh yeah and a tad bit chilly!

Day 5 – wow Montana is a big state, and everyone seems to be wearing camo! Oh and I woke up to feed the horses.

Day 6 – climb up to yellowstone, saw some up close nature… As in that bison is crossing the street in front of me. A long way up for a hole that blows smoke!

Day 7 – rolling into our shelter for the night to realize it was a hanger and we were expected to sleep on cement floors. Ouch ~ Instead heading to Vernal Utah and stopping on top of this climb for a little scenic view.

Day 8 – Rolling into Utah. Wow, route 128. I have no words to describe the beauty of this place. Pictures will have to talk.

Day 9- Santa Fe – Mmmmm… I didn’t really feel safe there, but the mountains and landscape coming in was breathtaking. I also think we got shot at from the distance!

Day 10- Roswell New Mexico… Little town with green aliens, generous town who pitched in to get us hotel rooms, I made the local paper! Oh and the biggest storm I’ve ever seen, hail, broken windows, flash flooding etc!

Day 11 – Arriving at a church in San Angelo Texas after a long day of dodging tarentula’s on the bike for a stretch of 112km of straight open road with a headwind of 50km/hr to a great BBQ with brisket, corn bread and homemade BBQ sauce. This long boring day was a good one to remember who I was riding for and why. Helped me finish the day.

Day 12 – Biking further into Texas, seeing signs for Austin! Woot! Biking passed a camel farm… Camel farm???

Getting to the finish line in Dripping Springs and realizing you’ve done it!

Day 13 – what? A day off? Ooooh…. What’s that pain? Longhorn game, local scene, bed later than I thought!

Day 14 – Livestrong challenge in the morning, Lance is pretty fast, but I caught his teammate Levi for a picture.

Good bye dinner with new found friends, oh, and hanging out with Kelly Gruber who I’m pretty sure had no idea where he was!

Got an award for working the GPS and pushing out asthma drugs to my teammates!

Ladies of the trip (+Gruber)

Today: I guess I am still wrapping my head around what happened. I look back from the moment I signed up for this, everything that went down and how really, it was a life changing experience. Looking back, I guess it really wasn’t about the bike. Met some incredible people, learned a lot about myself and now, today… I’m busy finding the girl that I left behind a few months back. I am looking forward to seeing what the next challenge will be and what will unfold in the months ahead.

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