Thursday, May 18th, 2017

The day the team has been waiting for all year has finally come! For me, today will be spent packing and gathering any last minute items, taking a ‘before picture’ to compare to the end of the trip, and saying goodbye to my family. Later tonight the team will depart from Union Station in downtown Chicago and begin our journey to NYC. Myself along with a few others will be driving the van (who has yet to be officially named) to Brooklyn where we will be staying at the relative of the original founder of Illini 4000’s house. The rest of the team will be taking the Amtrak to NYC and packing their bikes into boxes that will fit on the train.
Earlier this week it was revealed that we will be meeting the mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio. After years of the team reaching out to him, this year he finally agreed. I don’t know about the rest of the team but the closest I’ve come to meeting someone famous was seeing wax figures in Las Vegas so I’m hoping I can play it cool when meeting Bill.
We will start the first day of biking this Sunday in hilly New York state. During our training we would ride to Kickapoo state park about 30 miles away from Champaign to practice hills. At the park there is a “wall” (which in reality is a very small climb compared to what we will be facing). The team has been informed that day one of biking will entail 55 Kickapoo hills. Pray for us folks.
Over and out.

MB