From left to right, Rob and Tom (form Tasmania) and Joe and Aaron (from Nebraska).
Rain Selfie outside the Mennonite Meat Shop
Our place to stay in the Baptist Church
Ditto
Madison is a historical river town on the Ohio River (I think). Anyway, sign.
Some Madison shots.
Well hello again followers! It's time to blog another trip. As I wrote in the intro awhile ago, I've just finished 5 days of RAGBRAI (a late start because of Sirk and Ray's wedding, but I still was able to get in 294 miles, 5 shows, and $700 for the Team RoadShow by busking), and yesterday Iris and I drove 300 miles or so southern Indiana so I can join the Ride for DIPG crew (www.ridefordipg.org) put together by Morgan, who I rode halfway across country with in 2003 when he was 15. We'll ride through Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia until we get the ocean and Virginia Beach on August 18th. From there I may keep riding alone, not sure.
Last night I joined Joe, Morgan, and Aaron (part of the original crew) and Montana additions from Tasmania Rob and Tom to ride to Virginia Beach. They are all super fun people and it's very interesting to be riding with a large group of guys again. It's much more like my 7-guy 2003 trip than my 1 guy, 3-girl 2007 trip and my solo 2014 and 2015 trips. Of course it's nothing like RAGBRAI.
Today we did 75.44 miles, leaving at 8 and arriving at 4pm, with 4:53 on bike time. Southern Indiana is hilly (looks a lot like Michigan), and very humid. We had an intense storm roll in during the morning part, and after awhile of riding in the rain (75 degrees though) we took a break at a Mennonite meat shop around mile 20. After the storm passed the rest of the riding was hilly but not to bad, and mostly dry.
Morgan has an injury so he's driving along with the crew to help raise money for DIPG. He's got a bum achilles (it effed up in Colorado), so he's driving to the end town and securing us a place to stay, then going out on unloaded training rides to heal up. Hopefully he'll be able to finish the ride fully loaded again.
The nice thing about this is that the we are getting churches to stay in almost every night, and that's posh camping. I don't have to roll into town and find a place to crash for free - which is fun - but also a pain in the ass. This makes this a weird mix between a supported and self-supported ride, but I like it. It's a nice change of bike touring pace for me.
Rob and Tom started in San Francisco, and when we finish in 18 days will have been on the road for 99 days and a bit over 5k miles. Morgan, Aaron, and Joe will have about 4,500 miles and maybe 70-80 days (I'm not sure). I'll have about 20 days (25 if you count RAGBRAI) and some # of miles. Counting RAGBRAI I'm at mile 360-ish now. I'm not sure where I'll end up, but, I hope to get at least 1,000.
Anyways, the guys are a ton of fun and have great, fun attitudes. We went out to eat tonight and then had ice cream and at really fun parlour where we cracked jokes with the owner and his son. Tonight we sleep out of the rain in Baptist church.
As Sirk and Ray would say #winning!
ILYQ
