Illini 4000

View Original

Day 57: Paddling Out Cancer in Boise

Today was a beautiful day in Boise. After yesterday's very long and tough ride, most of the team took full advantage of late wake up and slept in for quite a long time. We left our stayover around 10:30, which allowed us to sleep in and for some to find some good places to get coffee and/or breakfast.Today's event was pretty special as we got to participate in a river float! Even better, this was a fundraising activity to 'Paddle Out Cancer'. The event coordinators were so generous in setting our entire team with three large rafts, with life vests and some paddles. We had 4 miles to float, and what an eventful 4 miles! From avoiding other rafts to avoiding the shore which had lots of branches and rocks (which some groups did not do a great job of avoiding), we made it down the river. We got to swing on ropes to jump in the river and swim whenever we wanted. It was so much fun. Alas, at the end of the day, this event sure did make us very tired!After we finished the float, we got to hang out in a park and listen to live music and hang out in a cool atmosphere. As participants, we all got a grilled wrap from a food truck. They tasted great and were worth the wait.We really want to thank Ben who was a huge point of contact for this event and generously supplied the rafts. Additionally, Ben was amazing and spent several hours last night at the stayover looking over some bikes, generously taking his time and skills to fix many things that were not working well for riders.Well, I have caught up on today, gotten all of the day's properly labeled, but I do realize that I am still missing a few days. Hopefully they will pop up soon. I do want to make sure that you know that tomorrow we are entering Oregon, and we have been warned that it is a little sparse in some of the areas that we will be traveling. I will keep updating as I can, but that will be very dependent on cell phone reception, so we shall hope for the best! Oh. And we switch into a new time zone, so another hour back. That is all for no we! It was a good day, exhausting day.