Well, so much for blogging everyday! Its been a busy and hectic first few days on the trip so far and its been difficult to find time and the internet needed to catch up on the blog.  In addition, my team chore has been to help out with the website updates which has taken the place of my personal blog updates.  Excuses aside, I will try to come up to date here.    

    First of all I would like to take a second to thank all of the donors who helped me to experience this trip.  I was amazed to see how much support that family, friends, and even strangers offered me towards this trip, and none of this would be possible without your help.    Like I said above, these last few days have been really crazy.  It feels like its been weeks since leaving Chicago last Wednesday.  The journey started with a 20+ hour train ride, that felt even longer, but offered a new way to see the countryside.  Once we arrived at our destination of New York City, we scrambled for a place to stay the two nights because our planned location could not accommodate us at the last minute.  Luckily, we found accommodations in two different apartments on opposite sides of Manhattan for both nights.  This meant using the subway system many times in our short time in NYC, but also meant we got a chance to see a lot of the city.  After doing some sightseeing on our free day, we finally started our journey with a send off in Central Park and a great 67 mile ride.    

  After finishing the ride, we stayed over at an I4K alum's house in Hillsboro, New Jersey.  The Thakkar family was very welcoming to the team and gave us a great resting place between rides.  The next day we headed out around 7am towards Philadelphia, PA which ended in around 86 miles total.  This was a great ride because of the amazing countryside, but also meant climbing and descending many, many hills.  At one point, going somewhere close to 1mph I tipped my bike off the road and spilled off the side.  Fortunately, there was a large thorn bush to break my fall and leave my leg bleeding slightly.  Even with the harder route, my group was able to persevere and arrive first to the stay over in Philly.  We made the trip so quickly that we not only beat the support vehicle to the destination, but also the rabbi that was going to meet us to open up the chabad house where we stayed.  As the rest of the groups arrived, a few of us made our way out to a local eatery to get some authentic Philly Cheese steaks.  Shortly after returning to the chabad house, we all went to sleep wiped out from the long day.    

 This brings us up to today, where we did a quick 40 mile ride out to Delaware where we are staying at a great church that fed us some awesome food from a local pizza place.  Most of us spent the day catching up on lost sleep and repairing bikes that have had some trouble in the last few days of hard riding. Of course even with the easier ride I found time to fall over on the road and make my other leg bleed.  Overall this short day was much needed, as we have an 80 mile day tomorrow with even more hills.      

  That pretty much sums up the last few days of the trip.  I will try to keep up with this blog more often in the future to give you more breaking news.