Today’s ride was dedicated to several individuals that we have heard about along our journey throughout Wyoming. Marc on our team is a very social individual who always takes the time to ask those we meet about their story. He shared with us the stories of Glenn Siron, who battled intestinal cancer, Barbara Siron, who battled lung cancer, Clara Bell McElley who battled pancreatic cancer, and O.F. Wallenburg, Margaret Trueax, C Henry Trueax, and Donald Trueax.
I know that is a lot of names and it can be hard to find meaning in just a name, but these are people in our world fighting each and every day, and we are honored to bike in dedication to them and their bravery and strength to wake up in the morning and keep fighting.
Today was another lovely day on the bike: 70 miles on one road almost the whole day! After our lunch stop we hit the road and saw our first glimpse of the MOUNTAINS! We can’t wait to conquer them soon. It was another overcast day – so far we have gotten extremely lucky with the weather and seem to be beating the heat. It must be all of the good thoughts that our loved ones are sending us along our journey :)
We are lucky tonight to be staying at St. Luke’s Lutheran Church in Buffalo. Groups have stayed here many times in the past, and they were ready to welcome us back with open arms. They put in a lot of work to arrange showers for us at a nearby motel complete with a swimming pool! The advantage of waking up early (besides beating the heat) is that we have so much time to hang out at our stayovers and have fun together! After we swam and got showers, we ate a delicious homemade meal (complete with AMAZING cookies and ice cream) and then got to relax. We are turning in early to get our energy up for a day of mountain climbing tomorrow and an evening of camping afterward.
I’m going to cheat a little bit and shout-out my whole entire team! Lately we have been waking up super early but have been rolling out on time and flying through days that would have been impossible to do merely a month ago. Today was not easy by any means, but everyone has become so safe and strong that it looked like a breeze out there and was a really fun day. I am excited to be going through this ride with them and am also getting a little sad that tomorrow is already July, and our time together is going to be over sooner than I would like!