Whenever I have internet access, there is usually a long line and I have to hurry so I apologize for bad writing for all of my blog entries.

Day 2 was a 77 mile ride from Hillsborough, NJ to Philadelphia.  The first 73 miles were great, especially the beginning part with beautiful scenery.  There were a lot of hills which were challenging but not as challenging as they will be in a few days.  I have a fear of going fast down hills, but this fear lessened on day 2.  We saw a town which my entire group decided we wanted to move to, on the coast of NY and PA by the Delaware River.  The best part of our ride happened around there.  Our cue sheets said "walk bike across bridge" as we were approaching Bridge Street.  We didn't see an actual bridge so figured we were supposed to walk our bikes across the street.  So, being obedient team members, we did that, and then a couple blocks later came to a big bridge crossing the Deleware River on which bikes weren't allowed.  :)

The last 15 miles of the ride into the city were on a bike trail, but for 2 blocks we had to ride in the street.and in those blocks, I got hit by a car.  Some frantic woman, rushing to the airport, honking and yelling out her window, swerved around the bikers behind me and then side-swiped me.  I was kindof shaken up from it, but fortunately only hurt my left hand and after some adjustments, my bike was okay.  I couldn't complete the ride that day but a witness was nice and gave me a ride to the church we were staying at for the night.  When I got there, I found out that there was a miscommunication and hey didn't know we were coming, so we had nowhere to sleep. After some walking around and  searching for a new host, we ended up staying at a hotel and using the hotel points that someone's brother had.  It turned out to be a great night with a ton of food from the Alumni organization there.

The next day, my hand was pretty sore and swollen, so I drove the van while the group biked.  It was only a 40 mile ride, so we got there before lunch.  We had the entire afternoon free and so I decided to have my hand looked at.  After X-rays and lots of waiting in a waiting room, I found out that nothing was broken!  I thought that would be true, but it was nice to have it confirmed.  They told me to wrap it and take lots of IBprofen, so that's what I did.  It felt a lot better that night and this morning, so I biked today and it was okay for the ride!

We biked 84 miles, our longest ride yet, to Baltimore.  I went in the last  group which allowed me to bike slow and take lots of breaks.  There were quite a few hills today and I found out that I am still scared of going down hills, when they are on highways with lots of cars.  The entire ride today was on highways which meant speeding cars, potholes, glass, and roadkill.  It's also hard to talk to each other over the noise of cars.  The good news is that I haven't had much trouble going up hills.  They will get longer and maybe steeper soon, but  so far my legs haven't hurt a lot and I don't get too exhausted.  Yay!  That is something I was pretty worried about a week ago.

I actually haven't been hurting much at all.  My knee has been bothering me a little, but thanks to kinesiology last semester, I think I figured out the problem and can adjust the placement of the cleat of my shoe to fix it.  I hope I'm right!

We had grilled veggie burgers once we arrived here, at a coop in Baltimore.  It was wonderful to eat delicious, protein-filled vegetarian food.

That was a long post, but so much happens everyday!  It's hard to decide what to write about and what to leave out!