38 hours...

38 hours. Six people. One 12-passenger van.

That was life over the weekend. Six of us began our cross-country bicycle journey with a road-trip from Columbus, Ohio to San Diego, California. We stopped only for gas and food. We left Friday morning. I myself had only slept three hours the night before trying to finish packing and making sure everything during the ride goes smothly. So for the iirst eight horus of the trip I was pretty much passed out. I ended up driving an overnight shift where there was no sunlight the entire drive. I started off driving in Oklahoma and ended in New Mexico. I am thankful for a lightening storm in Oklahoma to give me something to look at. Otherwise there wasn't much to see in the midle of the night. It felt as if I was driving on a treadmill since I coudln't actually see the scenery changing. When my shift was finally over it was 7AM Columbus time but only 4 or 5AM, so it was still pitch black. I was exhausted and immediately passed out in the back of the van. There was even a 10-mile strip where we were forced to drive on a rumble strip because the road was under construction but I slept right through it. Going into our second day we started stopping more because everyone's tolerance for sitting the in van was steadily decreasing. When we finally reached San Deigo on Saturday night we all jumped into the hotel's hot tub and then promptly fell asleep. We were exhausted.

After a good night's sleep we spent Sunday picking up riders from the airport and getting supplies for our retreat. We will be having our retreat until Tuesday evening, so we won't be doing anything too exciting for the next couple of days. Our first official day of The Ride will be Wednesday when we bike to Los Angeles. We hope you keep up with our blog and follow along on facebook for pictures!!