Day 51
Today we traveled from Jackson Montana to Hamilton- a whole 90 miles with a estimated high of 90 degrees. However to reach that wonderful temperature- you know that temperature that sounds tastes and smells like summer- we had to first survive waking up at 5 and freezing our butts off in 40 degree weather, weather that was almost close enough to freeze water and form snow, weather that allowed you to see your breath as you talked. We were all miserable- with anywhere from 4 to 6 layers on, and willing to trade anything for another few hours in our tents and sleeping bags. Seriously, asking me to leave the warmth of my sleeping bag and trade it for the icy breeze of Montana air accompanied by the wind fueled by pedaling our bikes was a lot to ask for. As soon as everything was packed up we all quickly ate, hoping that every bite we took would assist in warming our core and then we tried to squeeze into the vans for warmth until it was time to hit the road- please attempt to picture this… 28 riders, 28 duffles, 28 backpacks, several coolers, and several boxes all trying to fit in two vans. The image was priceless and needless to say we did not manage to have everyone fit in and get warm. Trying to get everyone to come together for dedication circle was asking a lot- our circle was a lot smaller than usual as we all got as close as possible for warmth and during the portion of our cheer where we generally clap… yeah that was replaced with the stomping of feet and chattering of teeth. Most of our team dedicated their day to three specific people- Hayley’s aunt Leslie who is starting chemo for breast cancer, Hayden’s pedal pal Alex who had surgery the day before and was spending his 21st birthday with a cocktail of medications rather than one at the bar with his friends, and Jaime’s mom who passed away of cancer (today is her birthday). My team for the day was Dalton, Jaime, Haley, Kevin and Myself. We were one of the last groups to leave the host but since we were freezing we moved our legs extra fast to warm up and ended up passing the other groups rather quickly. I’m pretty sure I looked like an Eskimo sitting on top of my bike- with arm warmers, my seattle jersey, my Loyola quarter zip, and my 4k sweat shirt keeping me warm (and that’s only what I had covering my chest, I also had shorts, leg warmers, and ear muffs on as well). By the first water stop though we all started peeling off layers slowly. First articles I took off was my sweatshirt and ear muffs, everything else stayed…. However when we got to our giant climb of the day I quickly regretted keeping on so many layers. The actually amount of mileage our climb was I am unsure of since one person claimed it was supposed to be 5 miles, and another said 9 miles - im a leg leader I should really know this but alas I do not, communication lately among everyone on the team has been lacking (Which is ok only because it hasn’t interfered with us getting done what we need to). The climb was consistent for the most part, nothing we couldn’t handle… just way too long. On the way up we ran into a group of 300 riders who were traveling in the opposite direction - an event in which they all are riding 400 miles over 7 days, which might sound like a lot but there are weeks on 4k I could add up all our rides and it would prob be well over that amount. The climb really wasn’t bad and there were two highlights that became of it- one was on the way up sprinting for a bit with Kevin while listening to some of the lion king sound track (he prob has the best riding playlists out of everyone on the team in my opinion- and is prone to initiating dance parties while on his bike) and the second was the awesome down hill that came after climbing for so long. To give you an idea of what this down hill was like- if we had climbed it, it would have been a category 1 or HC climb (climb rankings for bike riding start at a five and go down the harder they get, so a 1 is harder than a 2 and an HC is even harder than a 1) – it had a ton of switch backs, not much shoulder and was really long. It was a ton of fun to ride down- however not gonna lie some of the switch backs were a tad too tight for my liking and I used my breaks a hell of a lot more then I would on a normal down hill. Unfortunately at the bottom of the downhill my speed got rudely interrupted by a deer who choose to cross the street – now as many of us know where there is one deer, there is generally another so to be safe I slowed down when I saw the first dart across the street, and good thing too cause not even two minutes later and what was prob no more than 6 feet or so in front of me another darted out from the woods. My downhill might have been ruined but at least I didn’t turn into a deer’s punching bag. Anyway before this wonderful down hill and almost collision with a wild animal I had finally taken off the remainder of my extra layers- the back of the mini van looks like it could belong to a bag lady or homeless person with all the random cardboard boxes (holding our food) and giant black trash bags (holding all our spare clothing we wore to stay warm). By the end of the day most of us ended up riding in just our sports bras and jersey-less because it was that hot out- the temperature change from when we woke up to when we ended our day was shocking, you would think we fast forward time and experienced every season (especially cause like the trees around on us during the climb had leaves that all looked like they were changing colors. Winter in the morning, fall during our climb. Summer by the end. The seasons may have been out of order but they were pretty much all present) or that we were no longer in the same state we started in that morning. Our host for the night was a previous host- actually it’s a host that has been hosting team seattle since they started the route (team seattle has only been a part of the 4k ride for three years now). They had food all ready for us, a pile of packages from our parents –yay mail drop!, and had arranged for us to go to the local pool so we could use their showers (unfortunately we couldn’t use the pool, but at least we had showers). Special shout out and thank you to Hayden’s mom for sending each one of us something special that we wanted in the mail- I can’t thank you enough for the mike n ikes and for the Arnold palmer powder (I will be thoroughly enjoying that the rest of the trip!).