Today’s ride was dedicated to Jeff Miller. Yesterday while eating at a diner during our lunch rest stop, a few teammates ran into an amazing woman named Missy. Jeff Miller was her brother who recently passed away from colon cancer. We are thankful we were able to hear her story, and thankful for her random act of kindness she showed by paying for our lunch.
Today we rode 75 miles into Watertown, South Dakota!!!!!!! It is unreal that we are already to another state! We really enjoyed the nice roads of Minnesota and all of the kindness we were shown. So far, South Dakota has very wide shoulders which is amazing because it means we are able to ride side by side and have more conversations on the bike! Today was a pretty long day with lots of flats, wind, and intermittent rain. However, everyone was able to finish and made it safely to the stayover.
Tonight we are staying at the Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer, a beautiful church with such friendly people!!! The church provided us with a taco bar and gave us entrance to their local fitness center where we were able to take some excellent showers. After such a long day it was so uplifting to be treated so well, we are so thankful for Philip and his congregation for feeding us!
Today Zihao gets a huge rider shout out! Zihao is always so fun to ride with, and today especially he was so helpful at lunch time getting food out and helping others make lunch. It was raining and we did not really have any shelter, so it was really great to have help (or else we would have had soggy PBJ sandwiches!). I also personally had a challenging day and Zihao was nothing but supportive and helped bring lots of smiles to my face and everyone else on the team!