Day 31 Boulder, Colorado

I am dead.  I can honestly say that I just completed possibly the hardest thing I have ever done.  You never realize how hard it is to ride a bike if you have not been on one in over five years.  As hard as it was, I had an absolute blast.  The two guys in my pace line were Eric Miller and Jake Sutherland.  Eric is originally from Fort Wayne and goes to Purdue, but now he lives in Arizona.  Jake is from New Jersey and goes to The George Washington University in DC.  We had a 45-mile day today, and I chose today because it is a rather short day compared to others.  I also talked to a friend from CU-Boulder and he said it is a pretty easy ride. The cool thing about today is that Bruce Rogers, the man who started the Journey of Hope and was the first guy to ride ever, did his ride along with us.  It is very cool to say that I rode the same day as the guy who started it all.  The first 40 miles seemed pretty manageable and I was having a lot of fun.  There were some rolling hills and hard spots, but all in all, those first 40 were not too bad.  The last five, however, were terrible.  It seemed like I ran into a brick wall.  All of the exhaustion and soreness was getting to me at once and I found myself fighting to complete the day.  When I saw the last crew van that marked the turn into the friendship visit about 100 yards away, I felt completely different and hopped to the front of the pace line to take us home.  It was such a great feeling pulling into the parking lot and telling myself I just completed 45 miles on the bike.  I now have a great appreciation for the cyclists who are doing more miles than I did over and over again. 

For our lunch friendship visit, we were at a community center to meet up for some Noodles catered lunch and some activities and games.  I was exhausted throughout the entire thing, but the games we played were hilarious and fun so it kept me going.  The first game we played was called Funny Bones.  We were paired up with a partner, my partner was Andy, who I met at the visit and suffers from Down Syndrome.  Each team of two would pull a card and it was say something along the lines of “Elbow to Knee.”  So the elbow of one partner would be put on the knee of the other partner and they would have to hold the card in between the two body parts.  Whenever a card dropped to the floor, that team was out.  We got to hold 5 cards between body parts and got third place, but some of the positions teams were in were hysterical.  See below for an example of a winning team.  That night for dinner, we went to the Rec Center on the campus of Colorado University at Boulder (the main one: Buffalos). We met up with a organization that supports a team that plays a sport called Murder Ball.  Yes it has the word Murder in it.  It is a paraplegic sport that basically combines rugby, football, and soccer into one wheelchair powerhouse game.  The wheelchairs have cages around them so that when people run into each other rugby style, no body parts are harmed.  We got to play games against the team we met up with and I think it goes without saying we got our butts kicked.  They were running into us from every direction and knocking the ball out of our hands like it was nothing.  But it was an absolute blast.  That night, the three guys from CU Boulder took us out to show us the night life around campus.  The school count is now up to six campuses.  It is really cool to see the different schools.  I am beyond tired right now so I am going to hit the day after a hard trek on the bike.  Thanks for reading!!