Sunday, June 7th, 2015

Start/End: Columbus, OH/Richmond, IN
Mileage:,103.6+
Weather: Warm and humid with cooling and clouds which came with some wind in the afternoon

Living through a century can take you a lot of different places. It can take you to Springfield, London, South Vienna, Verona and a variety of other towns, all of which were along our route! But let me back up and start from the beginning. Last night we stayed at the Broad Street United Methodist Church and it was awesome. Great location to sleep and eat and get ready for our longest day yet.

The ride this morning was dedicated to the aunt of one of our riders. This aunt had passed away from breast cancer and was very obviously loved, so that was who this ride was for.

Now, I will try to do my best to remember the day, but it was pretty lengthy and I just had an amazing dinner (more on that later). It is kind of fun to watch how much the goslings along the route have grown up. When we started they were cute, and now they are bigger and look more and more like their parents. We started off leaving Columbus, and when we got outside of town, it looked a whole lot like Illinois, flat. But that did not last all day. We encountered a few hills, but nothing too challenging. The main challenge was the large mileage for the day! We visited what might be the last Tim Horton’s on the journey at lunch time, where we are our PBJ’s, but many on the team grabbed some donuts or a frosty from Wendy’s.

We biked through Dayton, passed their airport. And again we were in the country. So nothing too exciting that we saw today unfortunately. Oh. There was a water tower painted like a hot air balloon which was cute. Towards the end of the ride, things will were getting tough. We had some extra rest stops and due to the generosity of a rider’s parents who brought granola bars, we had extra snacks. At the end of the day, we were all running low on energy. A few miles before our rest stop, though, we crossed the Ohio/Indiana border, which provided not only a photo opportunity, but also a great boost of excitement to get us to the end of the journey.

Today’s ride greatly depended on the team that you road with. I know that incould not have done it without my amazing teammates and I am confident that sentiment is shared among my teammates. So thanks team, for being just so amazing.

Tonight we are staying at the generous location of the First English Lutheran Church in Richmond. There are showers! Always great news after a long, hot day. Two members of the congregation most graciously cooked us three types of lasagna, garlic bread, prepared salad and even dessert. This meal had a personal meaning as the husband had done a cross country bike trip before and he wanted anyone else doing a trip like that to really have a wonderful experience.

We had some of our group head out on a Walmart run for some supplies, and other teammates are watching Monsters University. A decent number, like myself, are already getting snuggled into our sleeping bags ready to rest from the hard day. We look forward to tomorrow’s ride to Indianapolis and look forward to anyone we might meet along the way!