Day 38, Team Effort

The theme for today was Relay, that is correct we decided that it was time for us to break out the secret weapon against the wind.  Let me say the timing could not have been any better.  We had gusting winds of 40 mph today.  Again I was impressed by everyone’s dedication and commitment to the ride.  No one complained no one backed down we just took our turns and told the wind, this is our ride and we will finish it.  I think there may have been a few other things said to the wind but hey this is a kid friendly blog.

I made up the rotation for today’s ride, kind of funny how you go off of one piece of knowledge and then looking back other choices may have been better.  Each rider was to ride a 20 mile stretch of road.  Such is life; we just simply deal with it.  Kurt was the first leg and was the lucky one of the day.  Even though he had wind to deal with it was not too bad and he had no real hills.  I was joking with sis in the car saying watch we are going to get wind and hills.  Guess what that is exactly what happened.  We got an increase in wind but the biggest obstacle was the rolling hills.  Kerri still has a little bit of a bum knee but she bucked down and just attacked the hills one after another.  She pushed aside her concerns of the passing Semi’s and just pushed on.  Next up was Shane and I have to say that he had one of the worst legs of the trip.  He hit the high part of the winds and at some points had to ride with the bike in an extremely leaned over position.  I did not envy his leg.  Kyle had one of the more interesting legs of the ride.  He was “fortunate” enough to ride from through the sand dunes of Glamis, if you have seen the movie the mummy then you know what he was experiencing.  He had a cheeto bandito bandana over his face and rode his bike like he stole it from the mini mart.  Wow it looked really tough.  I had the last leg of the wind started to wind down and it became more of a cross wind then anything.  Not fun but not as bad as what Shane and Kyle endured. 

Lesson for the day:  I am going to loosely use a line from Robert Frost, there are two ways to ride the southern tier of the US “and I choose the one less traveled”.  We have done this the entire way on this trip, uphill into the wind one day after another.  The beauty to living this way is that you challenge yourself to grow and change every day.  This also gives you a window into you’re the nature of who you really are.  I am sure you will surprise yourself.