I'm such a ginger.. By Emily

By the time you read this, it will be day 4 or later because of lack of wifi. =P

Wow! It's day 3 and we've had a good trip so far, but we've run into a lot of snags along the way. Let me go back to day 1.

The first 20 miles were great! Then we hit an unpaved trail with hidden potholes. Guess who hit one?

This girl.

So we cautiously made our way through as it started to pour down rain. The rain didn't appear to be letting up that much, so we took shelter in a gas station. (Thank you, by the way, for taking us in. We were soaked and probably didn't smell all the great.) We ate our lunch there and left when the rain had stopped. The next 15 miles or so were chilly and still pretty wet. Especially when cars drove by and would spray up water from the road. After those 15 miles or so, the weather was nice and warm and we were going to finish our ride no problem! Except.... I got a flat tire. When Alex went to fix it, the back derailer was messed up. I could no longer shift my back gears. Our backup driver, Dad, had to come get us. We were about 7 miles away from camp.

Day 2!

On this day, I was the backup driver. Alex came with me. We went to Bowling Green, Ohio to a nifty little bike shop called Cycle Werks to get my bike fixed. They had the cable replaced in no time! So we were on our way to the next camp site. We got there and set up our tent pretty easily and filled up our air mattresses. It was so nice, I took a nap. I woke up to a call from Dad.

“Hello?”

“We're lost, we need you to come get us.”

Okay, that's not exactly how the conversation went. But that's an outline. So, I drove for about 30 minutes before I found them. They were about 10 miles away, we think.

But wait! There's more!

When we went out to eat, it started raining. We realized that we left the tent windows open. Genius! The tent had water on the floor, and some on the beds. Our chairs were soaked because we left them outside. So we started a fire and set them close by to dry off. After a while, one of the chairs was a little bit too close.. Well... there's a hole in the chair now.

So, now to day 3. A very exciting day, at least for me.

15 miles into the ride, I'm feeling pretty good. I'm half paying attention to what's going on around me. It's easy to let your mind drift when you're just going in a straight line for miles. I see a bit of gravel ahead of me and turned too sharply to avoid it. My back tire got caught in it and the bike fell out from underneath me. Now I have some pretty skinned up knees and a skinned up, bruised up, swollen right shin. Everything else is either bruised or sore (on my legs). I just have a tiny scratch on my right arm. I didn't even cry! I'm a beast. What can I say?

I got back up and kept riding. We stopped for lunch at about 27 miles. After that, we hit the wall. We had a headwind and were averaging less than 10 MPH. We were also exhausted. So we called our backup driver, Mom and met her at this nice lady's house. This lady gave us gatorade! Delicious. So we only ended up riding 35 miles instead of 57. Oh well!

Nothing else eventful has happened since then. I have 30 mosquito bites... and counting! My biker's tan is getting darker. And my freckles are becoming more apparent! =D I'm such a ginger..