Earn your stripes

It began with a lot of stripes.  Our first ride out as a team, starting with a team photo at the Pacific, the tire dip, and the 24 miles of Ride for World Health.  Even though, technically, we began and ended the day at the Scripps Clinic. After all of us donned our uniforms early this morning (by 7 am) and we headed down to the beach for our first picture and the tire dip.  We found some unsuspecting and unassuming person strolling along on the beach to take our picture.  Just when we finally had managed to get into position, the Pacific Ocean staged a sneak attack on us.  Instead of just a tire dip, most of us ended up dipping quite a bit more of our bikes, as well as our feet.  And yes, we were wearing our socks and shoes.  So, we simply hoped for the best that the accidental bike dip didn’t do any real harm – as Bryce put it, “Sam, do you know what salt water does to bike chains?” and started off on an amazingly picturesque ride north along the beach.  We had the good fortune of good weather, great scenery, and attracting a lot of attention on the ride. (Thanks to the stripes)  Many people asked us about our group and wished us well in the coming months.  We finished up the ride by throwing in a hill with a 10% grade at the end, as practice for the hill on Friday we’ve been psychologically preparing for since arriving in San Diego.  Besides the hill, some of our riders had a few more success stories today.  Heidi and Roshan sweet-talked Starbuck’s into donating coffee for tomorrow, and Maggie and Megan restocked our groceries for an amazingly low price.  In short, today’s dress rehearsal of sorts has us feeling psyched for the real thing tomorrow.

~Jody

R4WH Retreat

Tomorrow we “officially” begin our 3,300 mile adventure across the country but I feel I should fill you all in on how we’ve kept ourselves occupied in sunny (hooray!) San Diego.  It took us no time at all to find the beach—a nice walk along Torrey Pines golf course, down the brush-filled cliffs to the crashing waves.  Between runs along the beach and rides up and down the coast, we’ve all decided San Diego has some definite perks when compared to Columbus, OH.  We are already getting a little tired of peanut butter and bagels but in the spirit of the season, are thinking of the Israelites and considering this daily treat our “manna.”  THANK YOU Einstein Bagels! 

To brag about our successes so far, Jess and Roshan (two team members who had never used clip pedals or ridden a road bike until now) survived their training rides, we had a successful and well attended event with the biology club at UCSD, and we all know how to change flat tires.  Our vans are now outfitted with lovely R4WH decals, the bike racks are all in place, and Justin and Peter had wonderful time sorting through every piece of equipment and we own and threw away a ton—why we did not do that in Columbus is unclear but I blame it on the snow and freezing rain.  All in all, we are ready for tomorrow! 

~Lauren

Heading to San Diego

Eight of us spent thirty-eight hours in a van to drive from Columbus to San Diego. Luckily we had eight people – the other passenger van had six people and the cargo van had two! Of all the vans to get to the Pacific Ocean first, the cargo van beat the others in the marathon of a drive, and Peter and Justin got to spend a hour or two on the beach waiting for the rest of us.

The hours in the eight-person van were spent listening to just about every type of music you can imagine, reading books that we plan to add a R4WH library (in the van), trying to sleep…. and preventing bikes from falling off the racks. The latter occurred when I looked in the reflection of our van in a passing car’s window and saw one of the bikes handlebars sideways, something I realized was not possible if the bike was in the rack as it should be. After realizing that her game of making truckers honk was not as important as the bike that was now lying sideways on our roof, a surprised Maggie (riding shotgun with a view of the bikes in the rearview) yelled at Bryce to pull over the shoulder. The rest of our trip was less eventful but did involve a freak hail storm in Missouri that almost made us run for cover, a schizophrenic “Presidential Candidate” at Panera in Oklahoma, country music that started at the Texas border, and California Border Patrol that instructed us to stay out of jail and keep our clothes on at the beach.

It was one heck of a drive over thirty-eight hours, but we’re even more excited for two months on a bike between San Diego and Washington DC.

Oh, and this is the view from our donated lodging in San Diego (Torrey Pines Golf Course and the Pacific):

~Jeff