After spending the day in Chicago, the team was well rested and excited to continue on our journey! Today’s ride was from Chicago to Deerfield, but we had a few pit stops to make along the way. In the morning, we hosted a ride-along event. Family, friends, and Illini 4000 alumni met us at the Buckingham Fountain. From there, we rode 16 miles on the Lake Front Trail to a forest preserve. It was a really fun and cool way to show some of our supporters what it feels like to be a part of the Illini 4000 Bike American Team. Once we reached the forest preserve, the team enjoyed a cookout prepared by our families. Thanks to all the people who brought dishes to share and who helped cook the food! The cookout was a great way to say goodbye to Illinois, as we make our way north towards Wisconsin. Another thanks to Trinity United Church of Christ for letting us stay at their church and for cooking dinner for us.At our stayover, we had the pleasure of talking with Wendy Hughes, an inspirational woman who has spent the last year battling duodenal cancer, a rare type of cancer that only 20 people a year are diagnosed with. Wendy experienced nausea shortly after discovering a lump in her abdomen. After a week of extensive testing, she was diagnosed with cancer of that had spread to her liver and the surrounding area. That evening she called her brother, only to find that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. Wendy went through several treatments and procedures and was put on a lifelong chemo treatment. Since her family had no history with cancer, Wendy found support from Gilda’s Club. Wendy celebrated her first anniversary in April, and is still battling cancer. She talked to us about how crucial it was for her to find a support group. “My family doesn’t have cancer. There’s a lot of stuff I can tell them, but they’re not gonna really understand. So I found Gilda’s Club and I found my support group. Everybody there understands. When you say, ‘I’m tired; the chemo makes me tired,’ it’s not like, ‘I want to take a nap, I’m tired,’ it’s like an ‘I’ve been hit by a bus’ kind of tired. You don’t even understand what it’s like unless you’ve been there.” Wendy also talked to us about the importance of having a good attitude. “I just decided that from the beginning that, what am I gonna do, sit home and be sad all the time? No, I’m gonna be positive and things are gonna be fine. I’m gonna work my way through this. As weird as it seems, cancer has kinda changed my life for the good, because you just really appreciate things so much more. Everyone says, ‘Stop and smell the flowers.’ Well, I actually do that now. Because you don’t know how much time you’re gonna have. I’ve just become a totally different person.”