After our historic 120 mile ride, it was only right to have another lovely rest day!!! Our rest day began (after waking up from some AMAZING sleep) with a homemade breakfast made by Zane’s aunt Debbie, and then some relaxation before we went on a little cruise! Debbie was so amazingly kind and rented us a boat to go out on Lake Minnetonka for a couple of hours to see the sites and eat some delicious lunch. We honestly felt like we were on vacation! It was so lovely and relaxing and just what we needed. After the boat trip, several team members went to a bike shop. Minneapolis is the last big city that we will be in for a long time, so it was important to get some extra bike gear before we truly head to the wild west.
Some other teammates saw family members and went to dinner or the Mall of America. I personally went to the Mall and it was a really fun experience! It wasn’t as busy as I figured it would be, and I got to spend a lot of quality time with my aunt and friend. After the rest of the rest day, we had team dinner, which was truly a delicious homemade Thanksgiving style meal again made by Debbie!!! We had turkey, mashed potatoes, corn, and gracy, and it was absolutely amazing.
We woke up this morning refreshed and ready to head toward less populated places! Zane’s aunt and my aunt loaded us up with some snacks: cookies, apple butter, fresh strawberry jam (to keep those PB&J lunches from becoming too boring), and Dots Pretzels.
We dedicated today’s ride to Vern Schewe. Vern was the grandfather of Andy, whom we met yesterday while on the boat on Lake Minnetonka. We got to know Andy a little bit and told him about why we are riding and our mission statement, and he told us that his grandfather had recently passed away from lung cancer. It is always an honor to get to hear these stories and remind us that even in our off days, there are still stories to hear and impacts to be made.
Today’s ride was a breeze in comparison to our last ride: only 47 miles – we arrived at the stayover before lunch! We got to take a couple of really nice, paved trails almost the whole way and met some really cool bikers along the way. At our rest stop, they thought the van was a food truck, so a lot of them came up to us and we ended up having a lot of meaningful conversations.
The stayover today is absolutely amazing. We are staying at the Faith Lutheran Church in Hutchinson, MN. They are so kind and shuttled us to the local water park where we got to go down waterslides, fly on the zipline, and do over a mile in the lazy river. It was a beautiful and relaxing summer day. When we got back to the church, one of the church members Will had made us gumbo! He is from Texas, and figured we would want to change up our diet a little bit from the typical midwestern cuisine. It was really delicious and everyone went back for seconds!
Today’s rider shoutout goes to Erin. Today the route lead the group to a gravel road (which doesn’t really work well with the types of bikes we have since we have such small tires meant for paved roads!), and Erin found a good re-route and sent it to the whole group so they could use it and have a more pleasant ride.
Today was a great day, and really cool because I can remember during our 50 mile training ride when we were all nervous to go that far in one day. Our training leaders told us that on the ride, a 50 mile day means lunch at the stayover because it is such a short day! We didn’t believe them back then, but it is awesome to see how much we have grown and how truly 50 miles seems like a breeze now.