We Survived!!

That water is in a 2-3 ft deep ditch

We bring you this blog post as survivors of a stormy night in camp. Our storm was complete with gusty winds, rain, thunder, & lightning. At one point the flash to bang count was ZERO! That lead us to having little sleep last night in preparation for a butt kicking day. This morning we had a small window of no rain so we took advantage of that to pack up the tents & hit the road. Getting to the truck to load over bags was tricky this morning as a river had formed...a makeshift bridge was put in place for us

As we started our ride the heavens opened up & lead us along for 20 glorious miles of cold, pounding rain.

Eating pancakes in the rain!

Just as the rain stopped abusing us, it's friend headwinds took over. These headwinds were in the range of 25-30 mph & were accompanied by hills...yay! Oh let's not forget about the crosswinds that would push us across the road, it was taking so much effort to stay upright that it was taking our mind off of pedaling. At one point, we were so tired from the headwinds and fighting that we just had to stop along the side of the road?..thankfully Mr. Pork Chop happened to be right there!! We had our pork chop and then headed on our way.


Need Mr. Pork Chop for fuel today!

We fought the wind for over 40 plus miles. For the day we did 68 miles in some very tough conditions! Let's say that with little sleep & our riding conditions we got our butts kicked today...it will be an early bedtime for sure tonight. We also want to report that on today's ride we encountered the creeper again thankfully he didn't recognize us & we let him pull away so as we laughed about seeing him again.

When we got to camp today we were exhausted, but we tried to hurry to get everything set up so it could dry. The sun actually came out for the last 10 miles or so of the ride, so it got hot and with the wind everything dried out fairly quickly. In the process of setting up the tent, the heavens rang with a glorious sound....the sound of the ice cream truck! Yep, that's right we got two big Popsicles from the ice cream man....they were well deserved!

We are happy to report that we are taking the Lutherans off probation today. We went to dinner at another Lutheran church tonight and they had a plethora of different kinds of pie to choose from along with lasagna, bread, and carrots & celery We went with Andrew and Toby and another guy from our camp, Mike. We ended up sitting at a table with a bunch of rowdies from Minnesota...they had sagged today because of the bad weather, so they were full of energy. The most vocal of the group was Howie and it just happened to be his birthday, so our room sang him happy birthday, and then the praise and worship band sang him happy birthday over the speaker system as well. Needless to say thfis made Howie even more rowdie!

After we returned to camp we were provided some on site entertainment by the local theatre group. Pork chop trained to slay the dragon...they incorporated bikes into the skit as horses & a way for pork chop to train to slay the dragon...let's just say it was interesting. We also talked to Bob & thankfully he slept in a tent last night...we were concerned about that this morning!

Tomorrow's the last day, we hope to have the energy & strength to climb the hills (tomorrow's climbs are over 2x what we have done so far), we ask that you pray for tailwinds for our ride (please try harder than your no rain prayers...our lives can depend on this) and we hope to report our victory tomorrow....after our nap!