4-18-08 Inconvenient Hills

Last night I slept like a baby! The moment I hit he bed, I was swept away, into a dreamless sleep. What felt like 10 minutes later, my alarm went off. With a sluggish pace I got up to take a shower. As soon as I was done, I went back to sleep. When I woke up, it was time to get up and get ready to leave. I didn’t want to leave, but we had a tight schedule. We had a breakfast meeting that we needed to head out for. It was a really nice ride to the Rohnert Park Performing Arts Center. The weather was a little bit chilly, but I didn’t mind. As we rode through the streets, we came to a stop sign, and instead of coming to a complete stop we coasted through it. As a result, these two women walking by claimed that our “stop” was why riders got killed so often. We just laughed and rode by.  Im really glad Thomsen wasn't here to see that, Im sure we would have gotten a good lecture on bike safety. When we got to the Performing Arts Center, we managed to find the building we were having a meeting in. It was really nice because, Beth Lidster had helped provide breakfast for us. After everyone picked out what they were going to eat, we sat down and had introductions. It was really neat because, while Mayor MacKenzie was talking I noticed an accent in his voice. As it turned out, he was from Scotland! Anyway, we had a brief speech about our trip, and talked afterward. Everyone was very nice including the students form the high school! As we were about to leave, the director of the cycling club offered to help us get started on our way to Santa Rosa. The ride was beautiful! A light mist covered all of the hills before us and the fog was just beginning to lift. When new arrived at courthouse, the sun started to show through the clouds. The mayor, council members, and various others greeted us. They were all enthused with the fact that we were riding across the U.S on bikes. It was really neat to have all of those people be so interested in our trip. It left me feeling really good about all of our work. We got to take a couple of photos with everyone, but again we were hard pressed for time, so we headed out. We rode on our bikes for a while, which was a blast, since the sun had come out! Also there were bike lanes, which made riding much easier. When our ride was over, we met the other group in Healdsburg, where we loaded up into the cars and headed out a ways so that we could drop the first rider. By then the temperature had begun to rise. Also the wind started to pick up which was a huge bummer. When it was Jacob and my turn to ride, we lumbered out of the cars only to be told that ahead of us was a 4-mile hill! I was extremely ticked because everyone that had ridden so far had only ridden up tiny hills, but Jacob declined Thomsen's offer to take the shift and so off we went. When we reached the top I was relieved to find that we were going to be allowed to ride down the hill. It felt amazing to finally go down a hill!, even though Thomsen made the drivers keep us under 30 miles an hour.  However, I was mad when the hill ended and I had to start pedaling. Oh well. When we arrived in Willits, there were very few people there to greet us, but the atmosphere was great. The people were so considerate of the fact that we were three hours late! They gave us really cool t-shirts and hats! We took a quick photo op for the newspaper and then the mayor told us a little about what Willits was doing for their city. I was really sad that we had to go, but we needed to head for Rio Dell since that’s where we are staying for the night. I got to ride one last time before I was pulled off the rode, since the sun was setting. It started to get really cold during my ride, and to my surprise, we were later told that it was going to snow. At the motel we got all settled in and relaxed as much as we could. Exhaustion is washing over me, so I’m going to say goodnight!