Hm, quite the eye-opening ride I must say... here's why.Jill, Disha, and I started the day out just lovely, riding around having a blast. As we rode down a hill at mile 35, I hit my top speed of the trip (43mph!!) and Disha hit a rock and got a flat. We pulled to the side to change it, stuck in a new tube, pumped it up and low and behold, it went flat again. After searching for the hole and making sure this wouldn't become another issue, I gave Disha my spare and as we pumped it up we heard, pshhhhhhhhhhhh. Hm, another flat. Jill has fatty tires and her tube wouldn't fit, so we decided that my tube would be the best option and Disha rode on this "slow leak" 5 miles to the next rest stop, averaging about 24mph. At mile 43.3 (I'll never forget), we came upon a town and there was a HUGE building on the right side that just smelled awful. As we rode past, a conveyorbelt stuck out of the side of the building with a dumpster underneath it. As Jill and I stared a very large, blood covered rib cage, rolled along this conveyor belt and dropped into the dumpster. We screamed for a solid 53 seconds at the top of our lungs, Disha realized what was going on as more rib cages rolled past, and we rode the next 14 miles in DEAD SILENCE... heads down, avoiding looking at all the animals around us, and trying not to vomit.Our lunch stop was awesome as well... we started by hitting an ice cream place for 50cent slushies, perfect for a hot day. We then had to ride up to a Taco Bell where the van was... this was very traumatic for us after our earlier experience. Lunch was fun, I made friends with some 14 year old boys who had sweet "dyno"esc bikes so that they would let me ride them. Steve of course stole some of my new friends, and they drag raced in the parking lot... Steve lost... EVERY TIME... hahaha.Arriving in La Crosse was amazing, at this point I was with Shea and Steve and we were slightly lost and stopped and asked a random woman with a bike for directions. She proceeded to tell us that her husband recently passed away from cancer, today was his birthday, the bike was his, and she was going to get it tuned up since it had just been sitting in her garage. Amazing. Another example of why we ride, another example of how cancer affects people across America.Coming into the stayover, I headed to a bike shop with Kyle to pick up some new brake pads and check out some new seats (to help with the issue). I ended up getting both, and a new black Brooks now sits beautifully on my bike, gorgeous as ever, begging to be broken in.