Just keep swimming and the hardest day yet

After giving a nice presentation and bike clinic to the people of Mount Pocono we took off the next morning to Berwick, PA. The ride was relatively smooth - only about 53 miles. It was a pretty nice day and the climbs weren't too too hard.

The day wasn't so smooth for everyone. Another birthday boy, Larry, got hit by a fellow rider and a few of his spokes broke. Nathan had to drive him to the bike shop to get it fixed and then Larry biked it from there. Also, we parked the trailer in a church parking lot about half an hour before noon mass. We had forgotten it was Sunday and the van had already taken off to help Larry, so people had to park around it. Luckily, people were interested in what we were doing so no one seemed to mad. Then, Nathan had to drive back to Mount Pocono to pick up the projector we left behind. Because of all these van detours we weren't able to change when we got to the middle school in Berwick.

HOWEVER, due to Andrea and Brandon having been lifeguards before, they convinced the janitor to open up the HUGE pool they have. We played on the diving board, played some water basketball, and just floated around like lazy bums. It. Was. Great.

Lesley's parents surprised her (and us) by showing up during the ride. They followed us back to school where they told us they were going to take all 32 of us out to a local diner. It was delicious. After that 15 of us got into our new van, Angus. And then it didn't start. So after 40 minutes of us trying to get it jumped and whatnot, the other half of the crew came out from the diner. They thought we had already driven back and just forgot to turn around. Turns out Ben was pretty good with cars and figured out our problem right away. With a simple turn of a wire the van started and we were able to hang up with AAA. We all had quite the laugh about that.

Most of us went to bed early because of our 5am wake up call. Why did we wake up so early? Because we had our first century ride today (that means 100 miles).

Yeah....um today sucked. It was all rolling hills and then moments of huge climbs. The scenery was beautiful. We even passed through Amish town. But what really sucked was that there were points I felt so mentally exhausted because the wind was KILLER. You could barely average 12mph going against the crazy wind. Usually you can fly down hills. Not so much with wind.

We did two lunch stops. One at 35 and the other at 75. These were both extremely useful and we even got some ice cream before the second one. And then the last 20 miles were miserable. It turned out to be me and Andrea just chugging along as hard as we could. We even took a break at the top of a hill and laid out on someones lawn for ten minutes. After a little confusion regarding cue sheets and where to go we rolled into State College. We're staying with a guy that was on Penn State's cycling team (I think) and he's letting us use two of his friends houses. They provided a nice dinner for us, too.

I'm off to bed soon. Not sure if it's a 5am or 6am wake up, but it should only be about an 80 mile day. And then one more riding day and then a day off in Pittsburgh! Cannot wait! Gonna see my friend, Liz, and also my parents. Every rider is really looking forward to the day off.

Until then, my face will be flopping in the winds the next two days.