I'm writing from a public computer in the basement of the Texas Tech library. We have about 600 pictures on Tommy's laptop, but apparently OS X 10.2.8 doesn't understand PEAP authentication so we can't upload any of them. I also typed up some fairly long journal entries on the laptop. Oh well.

I'll try to hit the highlights here... On our first night, we stayed at the United Methodist Church in Llano, and had a great chicken dinner. We wandered over to the Llano River to bathe, and played around in the water for a while.

The next day, we rode into Coleman and had our first century of the summer. We hit it pretty hard, and I think our average speed over the whole distance was about 17.5 mph.

We bumped into a guy named Whitney from UT who is doing an unsupported bike ride from Austin to Seattle; he's pulling all his gear in a BOB trailer. He's going at a slower pace than us (since his bike weighs a good 40 pounds more, at least) so we probably won't see him on the road again. The front pack of riders started hammering pretty hard again, and I wasn't sure that I was going to make it in the heat. Dustin Barrientes rescued us with pretzels and water at a rest stop, and the last 20 miles or so felt pretty good.

We had a few good sprints for city limit signs (I got Santa Anna because nobody else noticed it coming up and I snuck around the paceline at the last second), but everyone wanted to bag the Coleman sign. I started a slow breakaway a mile or so out of town, and the whole group picked up the pace to about 35 mph. Maybe 50 yards or so after the turn off of Highway 84, Hogan started to sprint, so Steve and I had to chase him down. It turns out that he hadn't even seen the sign, and was just screwing around, but it turned out that the sign was another 50 or 100 meters up ahead. Steve turned on his afterburners and lost me pretty easily on the uphill sprint.

We had a good night at the Coleman middle school, where we got big Subway sandwiches and slept in the gym. The next day, we rode out to Sweetwater. The latter half of the day was interesting, because we ran into a big rainstorm and got pretty drenched. We waited out the worst of it in a garage at a random house (with a Harley and a couple of cats; the people in the house let us in the garage but didn't really come out to talk to us). We rode in the rain for an hour or so, then everything cleared up.

We had another great night in Sweetwater, where some of the members of the Church of Christ actually took us into their homes for the night. I stayed with a sweet couple, Bo and Jessie, but I didn't get to visit with them for very long. Both the Dustins and I headed back over to the church for a couple of hours to lube up the bikes after the rain and do some other chores.

We had our first big crash on the ride from Sweetwater to Post; I didn't see it because I was riding in the rear group. The front group had a tight paceline moving along at 25 mph or so, and there was some sudden braking that led to a four or five person (I think) pileup. None of the injuries were terribly severe, but Tommy's rear wheel got destroyed. Kartik rode in the van for the rest of the day and lent Tommy his wheel because he had a few cuts, and Dustin rebuilt one of the spare wheels for Tommy the next day. We have some good pictures, but you'll have to wait.

At Post, we stayed in a lodge (sort of like a motel) with 10 rooms or so, a few bathrooms, a kitchen, and a TV room. We hung out for a while, I took a nap, then we headed over to the Relay for Life.

The first couple of days were all about the cycling, and that's fine, because we're still finding our groove and figuring out how to make this ride work out. I'm really glad that we had the Relay in Post, because it made me start thinking more about our mission on this ride, and it was our first time to really interact with people who have been touched by cancer. We were in a little West Texas town of 3500 people, and they had a big showing at the Relay; probably one or two hundred people were out there. They also raised over $26,000.

It's late and way past my bedtime, so I'm having a hard time finding the right words to describe what the event meant to me, but there were a few solemn moments that really touched me. Hopefully I'll be able to write about it later. After riding 83 miles, Steve stayed up for another 12 hours or so and walked around the track all night. When I woke up at 6am and relieved him, he was delirious and babbling from exhaustion. Did I mention that they got rained on in the middle of the night, and most people packed up and went home? At the end of the event at 8am, Mike, Hogan, Tommy, and myself were the only walkers left on the track, and I think it meant a lot to everyone.

There was also a Best Dressed Woman contest at the relay, and one of our hosts graciously offered to help Suchin and Kartik dress up. It's a shame that I can't post pictures now.

The next day, I slept for most of the afternoon, and we basically spent the evening slacking off and having a good time. The ride to Lubbock this morning was quite short (41 miles in about 2.5 hours), and here I am, two hours past bedtime, typing up journal entries in the library at Texas Tech.

That's all for now...