Saturday, June 19, 2010

Sunshine to pouring down rain

Today was an exciting day, no we didn't have another police escort out of town; I have ridden 3,000 miles! When I rode 1,000 miles it was like, "Well that's great but I still have a long way to go to accomplish my goal". Then when I had ridden 2,000 miles, it was "Wow, I'm two-thirds of the way to reaching my goal. Now I'm just amazed and thrilled at what I have been able to accomplish and at the same time overwhelmed that the challenge that I set for myself is close at hand.

To put everything into perspective, at the store where we had our "3,000 mile" picture taken I saw a Jeep parked on the side. I recognized several prominent stickers on the back window, so I went inside to find the person who owned the Jeep. It belonged to a very special Mom who touched my heart. Her T-Shirt read "United States Marine Corps Mom, Paris Island. I explained that I was cycling across the country and was raising funds for the IMSFF and she told me about her son who is stationed currently in Afghanistan. I thanked her for her son's service and asked that she tell her son "Semper Fi" for me and she thanked me for what I was doing. My conversation with her made the 3,000 miles I had ridden even more special!!

Up to that point the day was sunny, warm and the roads where smooth with wide shoulders. Except for the occasional "road kill" we were rolling along. The second sag was at the Avon, NY Fire Station and then we took off to ride the last 25 miles into Canadaigue, NY. About 4-5 miles out from our destination for the day the skies just opened up and the rain fell in buckets while the winds blew us sideways and it became every man/woman for themselves. Thank goodness I had my back light on so that I could be seen but with the rain coming down so hard and fast and then the thunder rolled in, I knew that it was time to get off the roads. I had ridden about another mile when I pulled into the Canandaigua County Building parking lot and got out of the rain, just 3 miles from the hotel.

Disappointed that I didn't get the last 3 miles in, I was happy that I was in a safe place, besides I can always ride around the hotel parking lot tonight to get the last 3 miles of the ride completed....don't laugh there have been riders that have done that in the past! I prefer to just get lost on another day's ride and make up the 3 miles. So today's ride was to have been 94 miles, I completed 91 miles in 5 hours and 15 minutes in an average speed of 15.5 mph. Despite the rain storm, this was a great day for cycling!

The "Snake Report" had another unsuccessful day for snake sightings, so it's a big fat ZERO.

After dinner Bill, Jan and I walked over to one of the Finger Lakes of New York . It was within walking distance of our hotel. It was very pretty, that's Jan and I at the waters edge, thanks for the picture Bill.

No comments:

Post a Comment