Today Christina Su dedicated the ride to a group she ate dinner with last night, five of whom were cancer survivors.
This morning we had a mostly successful departure as we started to roll out at around 6:30 after our 4:45 wake up along with breakfast served to us by the church community members. Although it was another hot day, we missed the worst of the heat as we pushed the rest stops to mile 28 and 53. It seemed like the terrain today was something that you would expect to see an actual desert, with the cacti and yellow fields. 68 miles felt very easy and since we had barely any climbing the day was not extremely challenging.
We arrived at yet another Methodist Church at around 1:00 and headed over to the local pool that had a Sandlot feel to it with painted blue walls and tall diving boards. We got major Cali vibes from the people there as we noticed that every single lifeguard was bleach blonde. When 25 of us rolled up at the pool, we got asked if we were a swim team. An inflatable obstacle course at the pool was the perfect place for races, and some of the little kids there even challenged us to a competition. Orland had a very small town feel to it and the lifeguards were calling out some of the little kids by name when they were messing around.
We have begun to notice that Methodist churches are the ones that usually provide us with potluck dinners and for dinner we were treated to roast beef, rice, rolls, and a plethora of salads. Pretty much all of us helped ourselves to seconds…or fourths (Mackenzie).
Although i4prom was supposed to take place tonight, since we decided to have another early wake up tomorrow we postponed it. Since we are staying at a very tiny church tomorrow it is not looking like the dance will actually take place. Stay tuned.
We are all coming to the realization that we only have three more days of riding and it is STRANGE. In a way it seems like this new lifestyle that we have adopted will go on forever. Sleeping in a normal bed will be weird.
Tomorrow is supposed to be a hard day. Probably the hardest we have left.
Gulp.
MB