Greenville, SC - First Day Off

Okay, sorry it has been a few days since I have updated. Unfortunately I have not had decent internet connection recently so I have not have time to update. So, instead of giving you lame excuses for not writing about my trip, I will write about my trip starting with where I left off. You will probably hear me talking about "Donation Magic" often. It refers to anytime that anyone gets anything donated to the group. This year our riders are really pumped about trying to get things donated. It is a definite thrill to go into a business and ask for free food and our riders are always out getting us donated goods and helping us leaders out a lot. I really love the group, they are all so cool.

The ride into Sumter,SC was supposed to be a 60 mile day but we pulled a classic Bike & Build move and made it an 88 mile day. South Carolina continued to be very hot and very humid during the day. I guess the most unfortunate and eventful portion of the day was my first bike wreck. I was standing up off of my bike seat for a minute to give my butt a rest from sitting on my seat when my right foot accidentally unclipped from my pedal and my bike went sideways. I fell to the left and got a pretty good cut on my arm and scraped up my side, knee, and ankle bone. I'm very thankful that I landed on my left side because all of the really important stuff on my bike (shifters/chain rings/etc) is on the right side of the bike. So luckily my new bike is still in prime condition. So, just so everyone knows, I am fine and my bike is fine and I will use this unfortunate experience as a lesson to be more careful and pay more attention to what I am doing. I just can't believe I wrecked on day 2! It was extremely frustrating. I wrecked around mile 35 and still finished out the ride with Melissa and Preston. When we got to the host location we stayed in a big gym and played basketball. For dinner all of the leaders attempted to go out and get things donated from local businesses. Because it was Memorial Day Weekend, we only got minor donations from a Piggly Wiggly(grocery store). One of our riders, David Smith, had a friend that lived in Sumter decided to buy our group two platters of Chik-fil-a nuggets. Nichole took charge of making pasta sauce and I helped her and dinner crew cook 6 lbs of pasta. We had an excellent makeshift chicken parm and the meal was successful. All in all it was a good day.. minus the accident.

The ride into Columbia, SC was around 61 miles.. the days are already starting to blend together. I started out riding with the front/fast group of cyclist averaging a pace of around 21 mph. It was frustrating at times because I was the only one that had chalk in the front group and every time I stopped to chalk a turn, the front group would take off at 21 mph and I would have to ride 24 mph in order to catch up with them. I caught up with them 3 times in 18 miles by sprinting after chalking the turns and it was wearing me out. When I tried to catch them the fourth time my chain accidentally slipped off in the front and locked up my gears. This made it where I had to get off my bike and fix the chain. After that incident another group passed me so I ended up riding with Katie R and Lizzy most of the rest of the day. This day was one of my favorite lunch stops because MOB(Megan O Brien) placed the lunch stop at a gas station that had a Subway attached to it. I got my 5$ footlong and was satisfied with life. When we got into Charleston, we were staying at the Green Quad on the USC campus. When we rode into campus we saw a bunch of restaurants on the main street we were riding on and decided to see if we could get some Donation Magic. We were riding in a group of 6 so we all broke up into twos and each group went into a different restaurant to ask for donations. Although all of the businesses said no, it was still good to know that we tried our best to get things donated. We got to USC early in the afternoon and had some time to kill before dinner. We all hung out for awhile and then used the projector and speakers to watch the movie "The Big Lebowski" before dinner. For dinner one of the Bike & Build alums from NUS08 named Kristen Boegner hosted a vegan potluck for us and there was a great turnout. Our presentation crew did another presentation and it was very well done. That night we all went out to celebrate Natalie's 26th birthday.

My first day to drive the van was a 50.1 mile day into Newberry, SC. It was pretty crazy waking up in the morning and not having to get dressed in the usual Bike & Build spandex attire. Natalie and I hitched the trailer in the morning and then we all did our morning chores. The day before we thought that the weather would permit us to paint the trailer so we had driven the trailer down an alley that we could only go in reverse with the trailer to get out. After the trailer was packed, breakfast was eaten, and the riders had left, I decided to back the trailer out of the alley. I did it in two tries and felt like an accomplished trailer driver. Brendan, the Bike & Build program director, says I'm a natural at driving with the trailer. Anyways I left USC campus and went to find a grocery store and get some gas. I went to a Bi-Lo grocery store and gave the Bike & Build donation spiel. The manager seemed confused about what "Raising money and awareness for affordable housing" meant because he told me their organization only donates to organizations that are aimed at reducing poverty and homelessness. I tried to explain to him politely that by increasing affordable housing that you in turn reduce poverty and homelessness but apparently he did not see the connection. He did not give a discount but I did not see another grocery store for miles so I went ahead and bought the bare minimum groceries there. After that I went down the road a little further and filled up on gas in the van. I finally began to leave Columbia and drive the route trying to follow the cue sheet. It was really stressful at first because it is hard to drive at 35-60mph trying to find the little side street to turn down that is listed on the cue sheet. I realized though that when the riders chalk the turns (like their supposed to do) that you can see the chalk very clearly from the van and it was extremely helpful when locating the next turn. During the first 10 miles of the drive we went over this giant dam and there was a really pretty lake on the left side of the road. It made me wish I were out riding, but I am also glad that I can drive the van and help out riders on the road. I finally got to a city around the halfway point and set up a lunch stop for the riders. It took about two and a half hours for all of the riders to come through and eat at the lunch stop. A storm looked like it was headed our way from the south when the Sweep riders came through so they hurried to get back on the road and avoid the storm. In the afternoon I was less stressed about driving the van because there was barely any traffic out on the road so I turned on Rick Astley's song "Never Gonna Give You Up" pretty loudly on the van and rode behind the riders out on the road for a minute before passing them. When I rode up to Kelsey and Varun, they both looked like they were getting tired and were riding pretty slowly up a hill. I turned on the music and pulled up next to them in the van. They both immediately cheered up on the bike and seemed to have more of a hop to their pedaling. It was nice to be able to show support to the riders in such a basic way. When I was about a mile out from the host location I pulled up next to Lizzy and rode next to her playing music all the way into the host location. At the host we stayed in a gym and played volleyball and basketball. My team lost at volleyball but won at basketball. We ate breakfast for dinner that night and then attempted to paint the trailer. We had the trailer perfect and it was by far the best looking trailer until...... (Cliffhanger)

The ride into Greenville, SC started out horribly. I woke up at 6:30 in the morning to one of my least favorite sounds. The sound of torrential downpour. I really don't mind riding my bicycle in the rain, but the reason this made me so angry was (as you may have already realized..) because of our freshly painted trailer that was outside getting rained on. The rain had completely washed away all of our hard work from the night before. It was a real bummer, but we all tried to ignore the fact that our beautiful trailer was ruined. We sulked while we ate breakfast and then got out on the road. The rain stopped for awhile before starting again around mile 20. I rode with Varun until around mile 25 and then rode with Zac, Katie R, Paul, Sebastian, Craig, and Varun the rest of the day. At the lunch stop, it was lightning and thundering so we hung out by the gas pumps at a gas station hiding from the rain. While we were hanging out there, we pulled out the long rope that we had in the van and used it as a rope for double-dutch jump rope(jumping two ropes at once). I successfully jumped it a few times.. which I hadn't done since Jump-Rope-4-Heart in elementary school. Anyways we waited out the lightning and thunder but continued to ride in the downpour for the next 30 miles. We had a 5 people crash while going over railroad tracks during the day. No one was badly injured just some bruises and scraped knees. The last 5 miles of the ride was full of intense uphill climbs that were extremely tiring. The church was in downtown Greenville so after we all showered we walked Main St. to pass the time. We went to a Vegetarian Mexican restaurant and I had portabella mushroom fajitas. They were excellent. Then we went out and walked around the city and had some drinks before sleeping.

Now that brings me to this morning.. sorry for such a long post. If I update more often.. this won't happen. This morning there was no wakeup time because we had a day off in Greenville, SC. We got up and walked through downtown in order to get some coffee and tea to wake us up. We made it to a bubble tea place called Cha-O and I got a blueberry bubble tea. I drank it while we walked around near the river in downtown Greenville. While we were walking across the suspension bridge over the water a local woman was explaining to me about the local college in the town and a little about it's history. I told her about our organization and she reached in her wallet and handed me $10 without me even asking her for a donation. It is amazing how often this occurs while out on the road by I am still always shocked by the generosity of people across the country. That is 10 more dollars that we can donate out to people in need throughout the summer. For lunch we got a bunch of Olive Garden salad/dressing donated so I ate 8 bowls of salad and 2 bread sticks. I know my mom will say.. "not surprised" about the Olive Garden salad quantity. After lunch we met Bill West, one of Bike & Build's board members, and visited the Hincapie headquarters in Greenville. Hincapie is the company that supplies us with awesome high quality Bike & Build jerseys for a cheap price. That is an awesome sponsorship to have and I'm glad we got to go represent Bike & Build and meet the people that help us out. Thank you Hincapie! (If you read my blog ever.. you never know). After that I came back to the church to lay down for a minute and I accidentally took a two hour nap in the middle of a room where a bunch of people were hanging out. When I woke up we went to dinner at Barley's Taproom & Pizzeria and Bill West and his family bought our riders a bunch of pizza. I was talking to Bill West before we were eating and he was telling me about his daughter that works at Brandeis University as the head of the International Admissions office. I told him about one of my friends Meghan McHale that just got hired at Brandeis working in international admissions. When his daughter showed up, I asked her if she knew Meghan. She told me she just hired her. It is crazy how small the world is. It is amazing that I made a connection with someone that lives in Waltham while they were visiting their family in South Carolina. Small world. We all hung out there playing pool, darts, and eating pizza until 9 and then came back to the church. I just worked on leader stuff for a few hours before deciding to catch up on my blogging.

At this point we have had about 10 riders wreck and I am winning the scar competition (or future scar competition..) and I hope to keep it that way because I really don't want anyone to get injured worse than me. Mine wasn't that bad and I want to keep the accidents that way. I definitely need to update my blog more so that I don't end up with forever long blogs like this one. Oh well. Maybe by in the time that it takes you to read this novel of a blog that my next blog will already be posted before you are finished.

First state line crossing tomorrow! Will try to upload pictures to facebook/Bike & Build's website soon. Thanks for reading.. more coming soon!