So needless to say, lifting my head up right now to write this post is a lot of work for me. My body is very tired. It was an early morning full of new and exciting activities. We started off early at the crack of dawn at 5:30 a.m. and loading our bags, ate some fruit, and checked over our bikes. We then rode down to Baltimore's Inner Harbor for the send off ceremony. It was a nice short little ceremony with some words of wisdom from some great 4K people. It was amazing to see all of the different families and supporters there. We gathered up Team Portland and did our dedication circle. This is a really cool thing in my opinion. Everyone holds hands and goes around the circle and dedicates their ride to someone in their life. I dedicated Day 1 to my Grandpa Bob Freeland. He is now cancer free and has been for 3 years. I love you Grandpa! I then said goodbye to my parents was very hard to do. I love them so much and wouldn't be where I am today without the help of them.
Day one of biking consisted of a lot of adventures. We ended up getting lost and having to take a few different routes to get back on track. According to the Alumni that was their helping us, they said expect to get lost everyday. haha Once we were on the road we hit a huge staight up hill. This hill went on FOREVER. I am still getting used to the whole bike thing and switching gears so turns out going up that hard hill I was in the toughest gear making it really hard for me to bike. Needless to say, I then fell over. For those of you who don't know much about road bikes is I have special shoes that clip into my pedals. This makes it easier to go up hills and etc. I was going pretty slow however up that hill that my legs where saying "stop!" and my mind was saying "keep going!" Unfortunately, my legs won that battle and I didn't get clipped out in time and fell over. This was only 20 miles in. I was off to a great start! :) Then later in the afternoon it went a lot smoother and I was getting the hang of it. I think with time my body will learn more and more about my bike. We are staying in a giant church gymnasium. It is awesome. I am just chilling in my comfortable sleeping bag right now typing this blog. I'm sooooo tired though that I could legitly fall asleep any second. Well this is Day #1 in the books. 69 more to go. I'm officially in Pennsylvania. Tomorrow is suppose to be the hardest day of the trip! :( Kinda nervous about it. It is all in the Appellation Mountains.
I'm out for the night. Got to get up at 4:30. Big day tomorrow! Prayers and thoughts appriciated!
-Peace!
Much love,
~Halle Stephens
Day one of biking consisted of a lot of adventures. We ended up getting lost and having to take a few different routes to get back on track. According to the Alumni that was their helping us, they said expect to get lost everyday. haha Once we were on the road we hit a huge staight up hill. This hill went on FOREVER. I am still getting used to the whole bike thing and switching gears so turns out going up that hard hill I was in the toughest gear making it really hard for me to bike. Needless to say, I then fell over. For those of you who don't know much about road bikes is I have special shoes that clip into my pedals. This makes it easier to go up hills and etc. I was going pretty slow however up that hill that my legs where saying "stop!" and my mind was saying "keep going!" Unfortunately, my legs won that battle and I didn't get clipped out in time and fell over. This was only 20 miles in. I was off to a great start! :) Then later in the afternoon it went a lot smoother and I was getting the hang of it. I think with time my body will learn more and more about my bike. We are staying in a giant church gymnasium. It is awesome. I am just chilling in my comfortable sleeping bag right now typing this blog. I'm sooooo tired though that I could legitly fall asleep any second. Well this is Day #1 in the books. 69 more to go. I'm officially in Pennsylvania. Tomorrow is suppose to be the hardest day of the trip! :( Kinda nervous about it. It is all in the Appellation Mountains.
I'm out for the night. Got to get up at 4:30. Big day tomorrow! Prayers and thoughts appriciated!
-Peace!
Much love,
~Halle Stephens