Stories from the road (and, uh, the past)

On the trip, as any B&Ber will tell you, I was pretty diligent, up until the last week, about keeping a journal. Now all that hard work is paying off, as you, the lucky readers, get to read about my days on the road! As a general rule, the entries will be taken direction from my journal. Any additions for the blog will be indicated by [ ]'s, and any omissions by ...'s. So there you have it. Ladies and gentlemen, an entry from my 2006 Bike and Build journal:

6-26 Boonville, NY to Palermo; 65.5 miles; Stage Win

Today was our first real rainy day. I was kind of excited this morning to try out my rain jacket and full fingered gloves, and just generally for the new experience.

After a wonderful breakfast of pancakes or, as Aubrey kept repeating, flapjacks, and toast and some weird egg creation [the ever popular egg bake... I think we had them like 6 or 7 days in a row in the midwest], we were off in the rain. I rode with Ben again, and once again we started out near the back and sang to people as we moved up. I tried to think of as many rain songs as I could, but my list was not all that impressive. When we caught up to "E. Bannerman," Ben and I sped up and high-fived each other as we passed. Maybe it was a little mean - but it was funny.

There was a pretty crazy road through the woods, which was a little hairy because of the rain. There was a scoop we hit about 40 mph on, and I just thought "I hope a car doesn't come the other direction cause I can't turn and I can't really stop." None came. At the end of the road, we caught up with Adam, Kathryn [Twyman], Ry, and Marshall. Marshall had gone down braking and had, basically, a dime sized hole in his arm and a nasty gash on the back of his thigh. Ry and Kathryn went down when they turned to see what had happened. They were OK, but Aubrey [who was driving the van that day] took Marshall to the hospital, where he essentially waited 3 hours for a bandaid. Poor guy. He's alright though. He actually biked the rest of the way after lunch. Marshall's basically the man.

After that, Ben and I were pretty much in the lead the rest of the day. Lunch was kind of up in the air, so we stopped at about mile 40 at a gas station to buy some granola bars, etc. We got a call from Aubrey saying a bunch of riders stopped at a sub place, but we were 6 miles past that already, so we just had convenience store food. Once again the cue sheets were terrible, so we asked the clerk for help getting to Palermo. She looked at our directions and said "These make no sense," or something like that, so we examined a map and determined our own route.

We zipped along some pretty good roads... and got to the church about an hour before the next group. We cleaned off our bikes pretty well, and the pastor (Tammy Nipper) came and let us in. I was really excited to get my shoes off. After making sure our bikes were dry, Ben and I just scoped the place out and waited. I called a couch, and I'm really excited for bed. I even have a pillow! [A big deal when you usually use your fleece sweatshirt.]

Showers were at the pastor's house, and felt wonderful. We stuck around for a few minutes and watched Ukraine beat Switzerland with a 3-0 shootout after a 0-0 score lasted through double overtime. Man World Cup Soccer is exciting!

Dinner tonight was amazing - chicken & biscuits & Green Giant green beans! I was so happy, and ate about a pound of them. Then we did our presentation, I lubed my chain, and now here I sit. Oh, and before, Tim, Sarah, and Kathryn F. and I discussed options for my hair. [Yup]. Tims thinks I should go with my normal fade&flip, but that I should try spiking it first. I like Tim - I'm glad he's on the trip. We talked about sign language [his major] for awhile before, and it's really fascinating. We also talked about cochlear implants and how they're destroying deaf culture. I see his point - we tend to think of deafness as an illness because we have hearing, but for people born deaf, it is their way of life. A lot of them wonder why people want to hear to begin with. And while Tim and I agreed that neither of us would choose, at this point, to be deaf (because we've had hearing), I definitely agree with him that deafness is a culture that would be terrible to eliminate. It reminds me of the Tuvan language, which is being wiped out and replaced by Russian. So what these people can communicate with a greater populace - they're losing their culture. Tim put it so succinctly when he said, even though it's a bit of a cliche, that "People want everyone to be the same." He's right, and I wonder if sometimes I'm guilty of that... but now, it's time for bed.