Hi! My name is Dori and I will be posting the daily blog during the ride this summer. I'm excited to keep you updated and share what we are up to throughout the ride! We are one month and 3 days away from departing for New York! We are all very excited and a tad nervous. One of our riders, Steven, said he anticipates the train ride out to New York will be like the feeling of climbing the ladder up to the high dive. Once you get a certain distance up, there's no going back. A bit of panic and a lot of anticipation follow. While funny and maybe accurate, I am confident that we are all going to thrive and succeed at raising awareness for cancer this summer.In preparation for the ride we are biking on both Saturday and Sunday this week, and staying over at our director's parents' house in order to practice our chores and timeline of our average day. Today's ride began at 7 am, and the theme of the day was burning thighs and getting lost. It was also very much a day of firsts. First century (100 miles in one day!). First day of hills. First crossing of a state line (Indiana). First time staying over together. First time getting chased by a dog. And most likely the first time being as sore as we all will be in the morning.When we arrived at our stayover we unpacked the van and did our chores as we will every day. Chores include cooking, cleaning the van, setting up the tents when necessary, etc. Everything took a while because it was new to us, but it is clear that we'll all become a well oiled machine once we get into our routine. Wake up is at 6 am tomorrow and we ride 30 miles home to Champaign at 7. While it has been an exhausting day, it is safe to say that we are all extremely excited to begin this journey together. We know there will be frustrations and tense moments, but nothing will overshadow the immensity of what we are doing and especially the reason we are doing it.Looking forward to reporting back in May!DR