Hi

There's so much to say and so little time b/c people are waiting for me to get off the Internet. We've been to Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania. It's been 6 days into the trip and all I can say is Wow! The tough times and the good times have varied about as much as the terrain. And this is the mountains! The former is usually experienced about halfway up the 6 mile climb to get to the mountain. But, thankfully, the fun times are much more prevalent. It usually happens when I'm flying down a mountain at 40t miles per hour. The hard time comes when you run into a huge pot hole going this speed. As I have found, this isn't good for the body or bike (but I didn't fall!) The coolest thing was when we spotted an amazing waterfall. Everyone then preceded to strip down to bike shorts and sports bra and jump in. Cool stuff like this happens all the time on this trip. Also one of the girls on the trip (Frannie) spotted a bear crossing the road not to far in front of her. The constant companionship from a variety of people with different backgrounds and view has also been great. The last few days of trials have made us really grow closer as a group and it's only been a week! By the end of this trip we'll be like a big family.

The hardest and also the most epic day was yesterday. On the trip we hadn't ridden more than 53 miles and we had 73 miles scheduled for yesterday. Most of this was to be ridden up a mountain with a 200ft to 1,200 feet elevation gain. Well we all got lost. We ended up riding 83 miles with the majority being up a mountain. Including breaks, it took 11 hours. Without breaks it took about 9.5 hours of pure pedaling. The people that I rode with made it so much more fun. We were all a little loopy by mile 62 from pure exhausting work and after that we pretty much just laughed the whole time. I fell down going up a hill and couldn't get up after that for a while b/c we were just laughingso hard. Cars were driving by wondering what the heck was going on. But when we got to our host we knew we had it made. We are used to sleeping on the floor of gyms but this host gave us keys to a resort. Sweet! We had our own beds and everything. The best day so far! The sense of achievement felt after a day like that is indescribable and can only be felt after pushing through intense pain.