Day 3: Stephenville to Ft. Worth
June 15, 2005
[Note to the reader: We really don’t know when we will have internet, but I will try to keep the journal entries coming as often as possible. But I have one rule; if you read my 70 entries over the summer then I expect to see at least three e-mails from you over the course of the summer. It means a lot to hear from friends, so please go ahead and send me an e-mail at wtandy@gmail.com]
Woke up at 5 AM again. Chris and Nick Bangia slept on either side of me and kept hitting me through the night. Still got up with no problems though. Had to be at breakfast at 6:30 so there was a pretty good scramble going on. But still, with everyone's efforts we managed to break camp by 6:15 and head out.
Still very saddle sore so had to gingerly sit down. Not too bad once I got going though.
Met Gene and the guys at Peacock's for a great breakfast. Ate an omelet, some hash browns and toast but didn't want to stuff myself so didn't finish everything. Did drink all of the OJ though.. Took a bunch of pictures with them and such. Took a while to get everyone lined up since everybody decided to use the restroom at the same time. We finally left after sincerely thanking them for their time and sacrifices. It meant a lot to the team and morale was soaring. People were very happy with me and the travel committee and I got all sorts of high fives.
Didn't get one mile down the road though before Natalie wiped out trying to avoid Mercedes' tire. She got all cut up. BJ came and helped her out, but her bike had got mangled up in the crash so she had to ride the van for a little while. Brian was able to fix the problem on her bike a little while later though.
My ride for the first 18 miles went by very quickly. Couldn't believe I had already come up to the rest stop. Filled up and saw that Granbury was only another 17 miles. Since we were going to eat lunch at Mercedes' church (her hometown) I felt like it would be no time at all until I was taking another break. I had assumed it was a small town, so even though I knew the church was on the north side of the town I felt that it wouldn't mean much in terms of time or distance.
Well the town ended up being quite large and spread out. In fact it seemed to stretch out forever. After a good long time I started getting discouraged. I had set myself up for a certain amount of time and as the time stretched out to 5 minutes, then 10 and 15 and so on I was feeling lower and lower. I didn't feel bad physically, but mentally I was in bad shape. Finally after 40 minutes of this blahness I came up to the turn. Fortunately, it was mostly downhill for the next mile or so to the church. Was feeling good that there were plenty of bikes in the church and felt even better getting off of mine.
Went into the church and felt a great blast of AC and there were lots of welcoming hands. Dove right into the fruit plate. It was amazingly, incredibly delicious. The pineapple and watermelon were like explosions of flavor bliss. After gorging on fruit I turned to the cookies. Two of the large chocolate chip variety disappeared in twenty seconds flat.
The church had an organ and I was checking it out wondering if I could play it I turned around and saw the piano. Almost jogged to it I was so excited. Turns out the other two pianists in the group saw it at the same time. We played rock, paper, scissors for it, which I won in a stunning comeback victory. We each would play one song and switch players. I played the sheet music they had, but the other pianists played songs they had memorized. Played for a good 40 minutes in all. Had to wrest myself away.
The whole experience had the effect of refreshing my attitude and I was feeling fantastic. I just tore up the road. Was flying along passing up riders who had left ahead of me. The rest stop was about 1 mile further than I had hoped for, but it wasn't too bad. Because the church was so much farther north than we had planned for, the effect was to shorten the ride for the rest of the day. Found out that the final destination was only 6 miles away and got even more excited. So I jumped on the bike and booked into town.
We stayed at an apartment complex setup by a Texas Ex. We had our own 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom apartment and it was huge. But first we all went to the pool and jumped in in our jerseys. Swam for a few minutes then piled into the hot tub and relaxed. For dinner we had all the Mexican food we could eat, which was quite a lot. I ate three full plates of it. Many pinto beans were sacrificed that night.
Afterwards we went to the main office to give our presentation. Only six or seven people came, but I enjoyed the smallness of it. I gave the introduction and such, Chris talked about what cancer is, and Sam talked about how to avoid cancer in the first place. I thought it went well and we got some positive feedback as well as some suggestions for improvements (focus more on us and less on cancer).
I was going to change some things on my bike that night, but the hosts set us up with free bike mechanics. Both mechanics had lost their fathers to cancer within the last year so and wanted to help however they could. They did an awesome job and the team very much appreciated it. Our hosts really worked hard for us and the team has commented that maybe we are being treated too well.