Sunday, May 11, 2008

TOSRV 2008

I had a little accident as I was leaving the parking lot to start the bike ride. Matthew had recently "upgraded" the pedals on my bike to clipless. I was very inexperienced using them and starting the ride was a small hill. I panicked as I couldn't get my shoe to click in and fell off the bike. I wasn't hurt (just embarrassed) so I jumped back up and decided to walk the bike up the hill and then try again on level ground. Once I got to the top, I looked down and noticed that the back of my calf was bleeding down into my shoe. I asked Matt if he had anything to wipe off the blood with and as soon as he saw the slice, he knew it needed stitches. He made us turn around and go back down to the medical tent. They cleaned the wound and advised us to go to the local hospital to get stitches, so Matt went back and got the truck. We loaded up the bikes and headed to the hospital, but by the time we got there I had talked Matthew out of it. I didn't want to pay for an ER visit and I was anxious to start the ride because I wanted to ride with the pack. We went to a pharmacy instead and got supplies. Matthew cleaned the wound and used 20 steri-strips to hold it together, then bandaged it up to keep it clean and dry.

We stopped in a small town called Waverly to get some icecream at DQ. I thought I deserved a treat.

These are the stupid shoes that caused my accident!

Beautiful weather on the way down there


I took this picture myself over my shoulder- not bad!



The shadow looks cool in this photo.

We woke up before 5am to the sound of rain beating against our tent.
With 50 miles until the finish, we knew it was going to be a challenging day!

Getting ready to pack up our tent in the rain. I was glad that Matt packed a tarp to keep the bikes dry.

This is the half-way point on the way back. I couldn't believe we had to climb up all those stairs to get hot chocolate, but it was worth it because we were so cold and drenched.

If you can't tell, it was freezing cold!

We finally finished our 100 mile bike ride.