Rushing to Reno

In Lovelock, the tradition is to put a lock on a chain and then throw away the key to show your love for someone, so we put an I4K 2013 lock there this morning and will throw the key off the Golden Gate Bridge! After participating in that fun tradition, we set out to ride nearly 96 miles into Reno, as carefully as possible to avoid flats. In the past two days, as a team, we unfortunately have gotten more than 20 flats mainly because of the heat and interstate conditions. Luckily, we are all professionals at changing flats by now!How many college students wake up during their summer vacation at 4:30 a.m.? We do! Waking up at 4:30 a.m. to avoid the sun and heat is our normal lifestyle in Nevada. Today, we got lucky and it was cloudy, which protected us from being scorched by the sun and getting too hot. This favorable weather and mostly flat terrain boosted us to the stayover, the Church of the Good Shepard. The air conditioning feels great after a long, hot day in the sun and we are so grateful for their generosity. After we took refreshing showers at the church, some of us went to a bike shop to restore our tube collection and other necessary bike gear. The bike shop in Reno was really cool, and the people there were extremely generous! Thirty new tubes were bought for the team in hopes that we can make it the last leg of our journey without running out once again.Tomorrow, we finally arrive in the last state of our journey, California. We are almost there!