Today’s ride was dedicated to Tammy, a good friend of Marie’s mom. Tammy is a breast cancer survivor who has undergone many different surgeries and a year of chemo during her battle with cancer. She has always remained positive and it was an honor to dedicate the ride to her today.

Well, today’s ride was supposed to be the longest remaining ride of the trip ringing in at 96 miles. However, we ended up shuttling for about 35 miles due to some smoke coming from wildfires in the distance. It was really far away from us, but the fact that we could see the smoke in the air was enough for us to get off of the bikes and shuttle to where there was no more smoke visible at all. Shuttling creates a different kind of long day that involves a lot more waiting around than biking, but we had a nice time getting to hang out together and did get to finish the ride after we were past the smoke!

Tonight we are staying at the Wesley United Methodist Church. They are so kind and cooked us some food, shuttled us to showers, and gave us 12 whole bags of fresh cherries! I did not know that cherries are primarily grown in the state of Washington, and they are DELICIOUS. We also got some food donations from some area restaurants that made for a really big dinner ensuring we are all going to bed stuffed :)

You might recall from previous posts that Marc is our team mechanic, and I really want to emphasize how much he does for the team! Our bikes are definitely the most important tool that we have in this adventure of cycling across the country. Bikes are a little more fragile than cars in the sense that if one little thing is off, the whole vehicle can be off. Marc used to work as a mechanic in his local bike shop and he knows a TON about bikes. He has been able to fix almost every single bike problem both big and small no matter what. He always offers to work on people’s bikes at any hour of the day, even if it is during the middle of the ride at a rest stop and he has not even gotten a snack or a drink of water yet. You can tell that he enjoys the work and he offers so often that you don’t even feel bad asking for help, which is really important because it means that if someone has the tiniest of issues, they don’t feel intimidated to ask Marc for help because he is so open and will never make you feel bad for not knowing how to fix it yourself. I think that’s such an important characteristic to have as a teammate, and it is something I really appreciate about Marc. I have learned a lot about bikes from him and continue to learn more and more each day!