Riding Day 2 – Ryan
Posted by ajmoreland | Filed under Uncategorized
As far as this Florida boy is concerned, today began as another very cold morning. I do not recall the exact low temperature for the day, but I’m pretty sure it was somewhere in the 40’s. On top of that, this morning started out very overcast and rainy, as well. Let’s just say that weather could not slow AJ and me down. I threw on my rain gear (which is actually waterproof outdoor gear for camping, or fishing, and not so much cycling, but it worked). On the other hand, just behind my right knee was still hurting from the day before and I felt like my seat may have been raised too high, so I lowered that and got some relief from the knee pain. Unfortunately, I’m afraid I traded knee pain for Achilles tendon pain. We were given the opportunity to grab a cue card (set of directions) and hit the road in touring format. This is when we got our first taste of how directions/ground markings were going to be for the duration of this journey. Apparently, a bridge was closed so the route marking personnel were not able to place all the ground markers. The result of this little problem was that several riders ended up 12 miles off track. The support vehicles tried to round us up so they could help us get back on track, but that’s easier said than done when you have a whole bunch of people that have set out on this week long journey to simply ride their bikes as much as possible. Luckily for us riders, a local fire guy was able to give us perfect directions to the next rest stop, and we took off before the SAG vehicles could show up.
Being that the whole reason for bussing people to the next rest stop was to expedite the process of catching up, AJ and I were very surprised to learn that we had arrived ahead of all the buses, and all the other riders (ones that hadn’t gotten off track or ridden the extra miles). We had intentions of getting to the location where lunch would be held ahead of everyone else so we could take a decent nap, but that location was another 20 miles away. So we began cycling using only the directions from the cue cards, which had not yet been completely correct, but seemed to be working well for us! We had made it about 4 or 5 miles up the road before a SAG vehicle driven by our soon to be friend, Tom, telling us we had to get in so he could take us 4 or 5 miles back to meet up with the rest of the group for parade formation. We were not happy campers and I’m sure everyone could tell. We reminded ourselves that they were simply looking out for us so we would not get extremely lost, but we should have probably just lied down for a nap in the comfy grass instead of riding the 4 or 5 miles back to the same exact spot all over again. Oh well, such is life. At this point we had only ridden approximately 125 out of nearly 600 miles so what was there really to complain about? We wanted all the miles we could get right?
I’ll have the reader know that I did not starve this day. I planned ahead and packed PB&J’s, and some left over pasta that I had cooked in the microwave that morning. Carbohydrates were all I wanted anyway so as long as I got plenty of those, I was happy! Anything was better than burning thousands of calories and trying to get by on Clif bars. I mean, Clif bars are delicious and all, but they will not supply enough calories for me to have peak performances several days in a row. We finished out the rest of the day parading into Philidelphia, this was a nice relief because my Achilles’ tendons were really starting to bother me for some reason. I think I’ll need to make some sort of bicycle adjustments before riding tomorrow.
There was a nice spread at dinner for all the Omni’s out there, but absolutely nothing for this Herbivore. Even the salad already had parmesan cheese and Caesar dressing (with anchovies) on it.