Once upon a time, there lived four young men: Joe, Jon, Max and Thaison. They lived in a far away land called Austin and were all Orange Knights of the Texas 4000 round table. One day, the wizard of the land told them that they must take a nice nice stroll down to college station on their bikes....

And by a nice stroll, I mean a nice 105 mile ride covering highways, farm, and city roads. We hit all kinds of road conditions on the way. Rough, patchy roads, roads under construction, and smooth cloud-like asphalt. All and all it was an amazing ride.

And by wizard, I mean they all felt like riding 100 miles.

And by Texas 4000 round table, I mean the UT organization Texas 4000 for Cancer.

And by orange knights? I mean well...we are orange knights!

So this is the tale of 4 men's journey to College Station.

The first time miles were quite uneventful...we hadn't even gotten outside of Austin yet. But then!!! We encountered our first mishap. Joel got a flat. Two tubes later and two CO2 cartridges later, we were back on the road. Only problem was...we were now short CO2 and couldn't afford to have any more flats. With only 10 miles down....we had to cover another 95 miles.

The first big rest stop we took was at an HEB just inside of Elgin, TX. We went in and grabbed some delicious quench (HEB version of power/gator-ade), some bananas and a gallon of water. After loading up on drinks and snacking on a few bananas, we decided it was an appropriate time to create an infomercial/video about Granola Bar Flax Plus:

Here's a Link To The video

Another short video we made was of song's newly created Texas 4000 motivational song. It was a HUGE hit in our small group of 4 and prooved to be a huge hit the saturday ride the day after our journey.

here's a link MOTIVATIONAL SONG

As we continued the trip... Joel and I had to shed a few layers of clothing. We decided, it would be a smart idea to tie our clothes in an HEB plastic bag and tie it off somewhere to come back and get later. So we found a little drainage ditch off a random driveway of a county road... (We came back for it later, but I'll go into detail in a bit)

So we kept on our journey and came across so many beautiful sites. We had rolling hills with shade and tall trees. We had vast grasslands that extended into the horizon with a few scarce trees. We had empty ranch land with cows and horses and donkeys. The view was absolutely breathtaking at times.

We stopped at gas stations all along the road. Sometimes I wonder what goes through peoples minds when they see a group of 4 guys in spandex stretching each other in front of a store.... It must've looked weird:

....

So we kept on treking and finally made our way to Caldwell! We stopped in at a Sonic and grabbed a quick lunch. I ordered three corn dogs and a small tator tots :D We also met up with our amazing and beautiful SAG driver Gina! She pulled in right after we ordered our food and checked on how our ride was so far. She said she was going to head into College Station first and we'd meet her there.

We were now around the 80 mile marker.

A few miles after the stop, Since Jon had an extra 5 miles from biking from his house to meeting us, he was the first to complete 100 miles:

We kept biking along the hills into college station. I've always underestimated the beauty of all the wildflowers that cover the grassy areas along Texas highways, but when you're riding out there and just soaking in your surroundings, it's a totally different experience. It's nice to see color amongst the greens of the trees/grass, the khaki of the cement, and the gray of the asphalt. You get sprinkles of yellow, orange, red and purple here and there. It's absolutely gorgeous.

P.S. So...I know our state flower is the Bluebonnet....but my question is. Why are Bluebonnets purple? Should I be calling them Purplebonnets?

Anyways, we rolled through the hills and dodged all the cars pulled over on the shoulder of the highway. There were groups of people sitting in the grass and taking Purplebonnet pictures. I wanted to stop to take some too....but maybe another day.

As we continued to College Station, Joel, Max and I finally hit our 100 mile mark! We had completed our first century!!! It was exciting! But we then realized....we weren't done yet. We were outside of College Station and still had to find our way to my friend's apartment.

P.S. I love cycling caps. I'm sporting my yellow Tour de France one!

After getting loss a few times and following Max, who claimed he knew where he was going.....we arrived at my friend's apartment. We were perfumed by an amazing aroma of sweat, sunscreen, dirt, and B.O. I'm not gonna lie....ladies digg it. I call it "The Essence of MAN." Or well essence of texas 4000. I figured, I will smell like this every single day this summer! HAWT!

So after resting up and stretching our fatigued muscles. We decided, what better way to treat our stomachs than Ci Ci's Pizza!!! We headed into the Pizza place and devoured more than we could fit into our torsos. As we left, we carried our food babies with us and piled back into my Van to start the journey home. We fit, 4 bikes and 5 people into this one mini-van. Impressive? VERY.

Naturally, on the way back we were all completely DRAINED. Everyone passed out or was silent for most of the ride. I was blessed with the duty of driving back! Since....it was my van. haha.

We stopped in on Elgin to retrieve Joel and I's bag of clothes. No doubt, probably one of the sketchiest looking things I've ever done. What would go through your mind if you saw a mini-van pull over on the side of a dark, unlit street. And then a small asian man sporting black spandex walked towards the edge of the street and into a ditch. And then reappear from the grass with a plastic bag. Get into the car. U-turn. And Drive away. Sketchy? Yeah, I would say so.

We finally got back into town around 11 p.m. and i was EXHAUSTED and still dirty. None of us had showered.....

All in all, it was an amazing and fun trip. We did SO MUCH and I couldn't believe that I had biked 105 miles! It took us 10 hours for everything. We left at 7am and got to college station a little before 5. Pretty good timing, I would say. We did lolly-gag a lot though. But it was all in good fun :D

Anyways, that concludes my tale of a century ride. And the riders lived happily ever after.

THE END.