The ride starts tomorrow

Today was the last day for preparations. Tomorrow we head out. I was up early today, around 4:30AM, couldn't sleep for some reason or another. I had breakfast and was talking to some of the riders. I mentioned to Dave, from Gettysburg, that I had to go to the bike shop to get my chain ring replaced and he said he would like to go along. I got ready to ride and took the bike out and rode down to the airport and back a couple of times to warm up. When I got back to the motel, another rider, Tom, was checking in and said he would also like to go to the bike shop. I thought he had an accent when he spoke but I said sure you can come thinking I was doing a foreign visitor a good turn. When Dave came out I told him Tom was coming along and that I thought he was from another country. Well Tom came out and we introduced ourselves and I asked him where he was from and he said Los Angeles. I said that probably qualifies as another country. We went to the bike shop and they couldn't fix my chain ring but Dave said he wanted to ride the first hill that we will ride tomorrow to see if it was bad as he remembered. I said why would it have changed? We went anyway. I was pretty happy with myself as I didn't think it was too bad. My legs didn't bother me and I was able to maintain a good pace. I took a couple of pictures and we started back. When we stopped for lunch, I realized that I had dropped my glasses somewhere. I went back over the route but didn't find them. I will have to have Phyllis mail my old glasses out on Monday. Rode a total of 18.5 miles and climbed 947'.

We had our orientation at 3:00PM and got to meet everybody. There are 23 riders going all the way across the US and another 5 riders going as far as Salt Lake City. We have quite a mix of people including one from England and one from Switzerland and of course not counting the one from LA. There is another Pittsburgher in the group, Roger DuBois who lives up in the North Hills. Everybody paired off at the orientation and interviewed each other and then presented that person to the group. It was a really good ice breaker.

We got our route sheet for tomorrow and the schedule. We leave at 6:30AM and head out for the big adventure! It's finally here!!!!!