Wednesday, June 9, 2010

back to pedaling..

When we got back to where the guys were on Sunday night, we were pleased to see that Will Overly (some of you might know him) had already gotten there.. I am not sure if I already mentioned, but he lives in Minneapolis, so he took a bus to Fargo and planned to bike the three days with us from Fargo back to his apartment..! He is a great guy, so we have been having a blast hanging out with him!

Monday, the first day back after my butt's vacation, we ended up biking 110.. and it was a very traumatic, yet positive day..! All in all we got 4 flat tires and a broken spoke throughout the day.. Normally we would have gotten a little down about all the flat tires, but our spirits were high! The sun was up..! In fact, several of us were biking without shirts on for most of the afternoon!
The only bad part about it was that it was Will's spoke that broke, so he had to call it a day a little early so that him and ryan could hurry to the next town's bike shop to get it fixed.. That night we found a sweet campsite in the woods by this small lake..

The next day, we woke up to rain..

waking up in the rain with the knowledge that you are going to have to bike in it for the next 8 hours, is miserable.. plain and simple.
After laying in our sleeping bags for awhile, yet again pondering what had convinced us that this trip was a good idea, we finally climbed out and got ready to go..

Then, as if the rain was not miserable enough, eric got another flat tire about 100 yards from the campground.. We tried to remain positive though, and were actually a little thankful for all of the flats the day before, because we had gotten fast..!
So we fixed the Flat.. got moving.. then after about a mile, we got stuck at a railroad track for about 10 minutes..

So basically, we got pumped to leave.. left.. got a flat tire.. then stood in the rain for 10 minutes shaking.. (Will was wearing a trash bag the whole time though.. so that was pretty funny)..

We biked about 3 miles, then pulled of at a gas station where we met a couple local guys who bought us coffee and talked to us for awhile.. We ended up chilling there for about 2 hours.. (yeah, we know.. but we didn't want to get back on the road)..

We finished strong though.. the full 75 mies for the day!

Today went awesome.. we woke up.. had a tailwind.. and were eager to get to minneapolis to hangout and have will show us the city! We ended up doing about 80ish miles.. but with the tailwind they went really smooth and easy!

We have just been hanging out with Will and his Wife, Alese, all afternoon.. which has been awesome! Alese is a residence hall director at a university here, so they put us up in these dorms/apartments and hooked us up with some food! It has been awesome hanging out with them and chatting it up!

Tomorrow there is a big free breakfast for bikers at this place here in town.. so we are bike over there in the morning and then try to make it 110 miles to Winona, Minnesota..!

1 comment:

Annie said...

Winona, home to Winona University...I totally used to see people wearing those sweatshirts in Rochester, especially at Target! Have fun in Sarah Margarets kind of old stomping grounds! :)