What an adventure this has been. It's been hard work and I couldn't have done it without the support of my family and friends and all the prayers and well wishes. There have been so many kind gestures from so many people along the way. I am surrounded by some amazing people and I am grateful for your willingness to support an organization that I believe is working hard to bring love, hope, peace and a future into this world. This week had it's struggles, and I went through a roller-coaster of emotions from stress and nerves. There were many answered prayers along the way. Thank you!
Before all of this I could barely ride my bike 60 miles without cramping and wanting to die. I could never have imagined doing a ride like this and feeling as good as I do right now. The first picture below was my reminder from above to stay slow and steady. The day was warm and I seemed to have a strong headwind for most of the day. Late last night, after watching Captain Underpants with the family, we drove down 138 to see what construction was like and we determined that it was just too dangerous to ride on. The next option was to ride on Big Pine Road through Wrightwood and then ride down on Lone Pine Canyon Road. This added significantly more climbing to an already long day. The pine tree below was the first tree I saw off the road for shade. The lake in the picture is Jackson Lake and apparently they stock it with trout, so there were a few people fishing as I rode by. My team car (AKA "family") met up with me twice at very critical moments of the day. The first was as I ran out of water at the top of the climb to Wrightwood and the second was right before I got back on the 138 right before the bridge over the train tracks. The bridge was very narrow, but fortunately, my wife was driving behind me to hold off a couple of cars. From there I rode on the 15 freeway to Cleghorn and then traveled on Old Route 66. At the end of my ride there were about 25 people waiting at PCC for my arrival and they were all cheering and the little ones had signs that they had made for me. What a way to finish this journey. In total I road 353 miles in 5 days and 12,906 feet of climbing. I'm not sure what the future holds in regards to organizing rides in the years to come, but I do look forward to hearing about how the Guatemala Livelihood project progresses.
Thank you for reading and if you'd like to donate to the cause that I rode for, you can visit the link below:
https://mcc.org/stories/acp/winter-2017?_ga=2.233315294.1390861525.1496541283-1672273008.1487577537
No comments:
Post a Comment