Team F(b)LAIR

Daniel, Jessica, Me, Blair

Meet Team F(b)LAIR, the best crew team of the five. Of course, I'm bias. Originally, we toyed with just calling ourselves team Blair because the first week we all wandered around like deer in headlights with Blair kindly instructing us seeing as she was the only one who really knew what was going on. We have survived a trip of water inundated camp-sites, no kitchen, monsoon rain with lightning, and of course a few accidental elbows thrown in tight sleeping arrangements (sorry Blair!). Nothing brings a group of people together like vandalizing streets with gigantic pink arrows and encouraging messages, or trying to fork sliced vegetables off the bottom of a still hot oven, or toying with the idea of a "family" bed in the home stay house that only had one room that did not smell of dirty ferret cage. (I'm sad to say Blair and I unwittingly made the budget van cab smell of ferret cage the next day on crew...eww!) .

Definitely friends...family for life.

Use Your Dragon Skills

Unsurpisingly, Kansas and Missouri have been fairly ordinary and pretty boring. We've been doing 90+ miles almost every day, though we've also been consistently 2-4 miles short of doing a century. So, to spice things up we decided to enact our "dragon skills" and spend and evening doing some recreational fire breathing. Surprisingly, breathing fire is extremely easy! All it takes is one secret ingredient, a lighter, and the ability not to aspirate before you have the chance to exhale/create a fire ball. My one tip is to hold the lighter a good distance from your face to insure intact eyebrows when the fire breathing fun is over.

Columbus in under two weeks!

Denver

Blair, Jessica, Amanda, and Chris
Denver Solidarity Ride

Denver Solidarity Ride

Summit, Monarch Pass

So, this is a little out of order, and a little bit of back tracking. On our way through Colorado, we reached the summit of Monarch Pass, which is the highest point we will bike to on the trip. I felt awesome when we reached the top at about 11,300 feet, but quickly got altitude sickness after resting at elevation and eating a bologna sandwich...I'm thinking the sandwich had something to do with the illness. Thankfully, with a team full of doctors, everyone knew to sit me down and give me water until I was stable enough to bike down without veering off the mountain pass. It was an awesome feeling to still be able to finish even after wanting to curl up into the fetal position for a good 45 minutes. Can you tell I want to vomit in the picture? No?...good.

From there we eventually ended up in Denver for our first solidarity ride. Basically, we set up a booth at a giant tent sale, and people paid to ride with us to the stadium. 20 miles on our day off! It was an enjoyable ride, thought my knees could have used the day off. That evening, in celebration of Cinco de Mayo, we headed to a Mexican restaurant for margaritas (virgin margaritas for me) and some guacamole. The interesting combination of Cinco de Mayo decorations and people dressed for derby day made it one of the most interesting and fun nights of the ride...aside from prom, of course. On the ride back from the restaurant Denver decided it would be fun to hail on us, but thankfully the weather cleared up to just the brutal head wind we faced the next day during out century. 

Century

Completed my first century today! It was horrible. It was also amazing. We rode 105.5 miles from Pueblo, CO to Eads, CO with a 15-25 mph head wind the entire day. This is what made the day absolutely miserable. In an attempt to combat the wind we decided to have the team draft behind the vans. This entailed the vans driving between 10-15 mph while the entire team rode in pairs behind them, essentially eliminating the wind. Perfect! In theory yes, in practice not so much. While it did make 20 miles much easier, it was an awkward balance between going slow enough for the slow riders to keep up, and fast enough to keep the fast riders from ramming into the back of the van. Needless to say the idea was abandoned for the last 25 miles of the ride. These 25 miles were by far the most challenging. Not only had we already been riding for 8 hours with a head wind, but now we were racing the sun. Must finish before the sun sets! I am proud to say that I finished, and after such a difficult day, walking into the Eads School Gym was one of the best moments of this trip.

Gunnison

Hanging out in Gunnison, CO on crew with Blair. We drove the budget truck down early in order to give a presentation to 400 or so elementary school students. With a few hours to kill before the presentation we've taken over a table at the local coffee shop and are enjoying an awesome lunch. Nothing like a spinach based quesedilla when every other day has been either pb&j or a ham sandwich!