Day 60: Into the Fog

Course: Cumberland, MD to Hagerstown, MD

Distance: 65 miles

Terrain: Hills

Conditions: Wet roads, fog

Max Climbing Distance: 5600 ft

Max Speed: 48.7 mph

Today I swept with Luke and Jeff. Any other day we would have killed the ride since we’re all really strong riders. However at this point most of us have vowed to just take it easy and soak in our last rides. That’s exactly what we did today.

We started with a climb right away – a big one at that. When we got to the top we were surrounded by fog. You couldn’t see 300 yards down the road. As dangerous as it sounds, it was so cool. We stopped behind the other pace lines in front of us and filled up water bottles. We just sat and watched pace lines take off for about 5 minutes. They would go around the van and begin their descent by entering the fog. We saw them for about 3 seconds before they just disappeared in it. When it was our turn we took it pretty slowly since we didn’t want to die two days before DC arrival. We eventually poked out of it and finished our ride pretty smoothly.

When we got to lodging, an NBC news reporter asked us to do a couple rounds of pretending like we were riding in so that he could get a video shot of it. They must really know who I am now since they’ve been following me since San Francisco. That’s right, I’m halfway to stardom.

Our dinner was coupled with our last friendship visit of the summer. It was tough to acknowledge, but we all made the most of it. When it came time for it to begin, we walked across the parking lot of lodging to wheel over the clients. They all had severe disabilities, and almost all of them didn’t talk. I took care of Linda. Her disability was pretty severe so I wasn’t able to talk to her. However, I did get to feed her, and I’m pretty sure I got a smile out of her a few times. Everyone did so well with the clients and we all had a blast.

Directly above ^ : After coming out of the fog, a lot of people were bunched up so we rode as a peloton for about 50 miles.