Adventures R' Us

Breakfast

After a lovely breakfast provided by the Grace Assembly of God, Erika said the morning’s devotion, and we set out this morning around 8:30 for Seymour, IN. The weather today was beautiful- the sky stayed cloudy enough to keep us cool without once threatening to rain. Compared to yesterday, today’s »48 miles was a breeze. Not only was it my favorite day so far scenery-wise, because our resident speedsters (Thad and Eric) were doing the sweep, Susan and I were in the lead the entire time (a first for me), getting to the church in Seymour before noon. Due to our swiftness, however, we ended up taking a detour through Columbus, IN -a city with some truly beautiful architecture- as IN-11 wasn’t clearly marked off of US-31. One can’t truly have an adventure without getting lost at least once, right? As our group goes, I suppose us to be quite an adventurous bunch! (Thank you Google Maps ;)

Cornfields

Speaking of adventure, we had a handful of incidents along our day’s journey: Esther fell twice (again- and as usual, while she was stopped); Erika got a flat and later fell; Nick fell when stopping at the 15-mile mark, landing on Megan’s front wheel (which caused two of her spokes to pop down the road, flipping her over her bike), and then had two flats. The action continued even after we’d all arrived safely in Seymour- Emily (the birthday girl!), Krystal, HannahJoy, Eric, Nick and Thad decided to go swim in the local river… and jump off the bridge overlooking it (after they’d determined it was deep enough, of course). As it turns out, jumping off public bridges into rivers is illegal, as the three Indiana State Troopers who showed up informed them. Nick, upon being asked if any of them were wanted back home, stated that he was wanted in Canada, but not in the US, so it was okay. Hilarious- that kid cracks me up! The officers were nice enough to let them off with just a warning…

 Megs and her broken spokes          

After taking care of showers at the local high school, river-jumping, laundry, grocery shopping and a trip to the local bike shop, we were treated to a dinner and a lovely birthday cake for Emily, all prepared by the dinner team of Eric, Kyle, Nick and Lisa. It never gets old watching someone try to blow out “magic” candles. After the candles were finally out, Emily was presented with a card from all of us and a few gifts, hand-picked by Thad, from the dollar store: a foam saber, a foam mini-bow-and-arrow, and some farting goo.

Emily took SO long to blow out the candles 

Sadly, tomorrow is my last ride with this amazing group of people. I’ll be with the trip through the build in Louisville on Monday, but then I catch my Greyhound back to Kansas City. I really wish I were going the whole way, but responsibilities are beckoning me home and I feel blessed to have been able to be on this adventure for as long as I have. I started the trip without any long-distance bicycle experience, and until this morning I’d been sore and tired for the previous couple of days: today I felt amazing. Nobody else agrees with me, but I definitely feel as if we’ve been going generally more downhill than up for the past two days. I hope the others start to feel the same way, and I wish you all the best over the next four weeks! It has really been a privilege for me to ride, share and work alongside all of you, and I hope to see you on future rides, builds or… whatevers ^_^

Ivan in Columbus, IN (little detour)

Lastly, we’d like to give a huge thanks to the First United Methodist Church of Seymour for providing us with quite a lovely shelter for the evening!

written by: Ivan Cunningham

photos by: Esther Hyejin Chung