6/10/2012
Louisville KY – French Lake, IN 61.5 miles
New Host: Combination of Local Methodist Church and Local Senior Center -
Previous Host :Gilda’s club: www.gildasclublouisville.org/

Many thanks to the kind people at the Gilda’s Club. They hooked us up with a great place to stay, as well as lots of great food that should last us for a couple of days. We would also like to thank Whole food and Trader Joe’s for the lunch food! We are eating very well thus far, but we are being reminded it might not be so great once we start to hit the Midwest, but we shall see. The lunch van drivers are doing a great job of calling places ahead of time, even the day before to get food taken care of.

Today we got to form our own groups, after trying to mix riders up based on experience and speed the past two days. I enjoy riding with other people than the fast group, because it gives me a chance to sit back and enjoy the scenery, but recently riding slow hasn’t fared well for my hamstrings. Kevin allowed the top 4 riders to get to the host as fast as we could. This also means that we ride unsupported because it’s hard on the drivers to try to get to our location, and drive back to the other riders. This is okay because there are plenty of gas stations along the way that are more than willing to let us get some water and buy some Snickers bars. It also gives a chance to tell people what we are doing and more importantly tell them why we are doing it.

We left Louisville headed towards a new state, Indiana! This is state number 5 for us! I’m really enjoying going to these states that I wouldn’t normally visit. This part of the state is very similar to Kentucky, so of course I like it. It was a crisp morning when we took off at 8:30. I have recently taken the role of helping the “leg leaders” design the route, because I have done it for a long time and we were running into issues. We are still having issues mainly because we don’t the area and what to expect.

We crossed a really cool bridge and thought we all the roads we going to usable, nope. We wanted to take route 31, which apparently is also interstate 65. So we had to let everyone know the detour out of the city onto US-150. This was basically a straight shot from one city to the other. As we were making our way to 150, we saw a dog, looked like a pit bull of sorts rolling around in the opposite lane. We stopped and grabbed our frame pumps just in case it wanted to taste our calves. We began to speed by it, and the dog ran into the woods..lucky us. I have had good luck with dogs in the past, but when riding across the country you never know what you’ll run into.

The rest of the ride was amazing. Yoshi, Jasper, V and myself rode REALLY hard today. We finished 61.5 miles in under 3.5 hours. There were a few pretty long hills, and also some nice long flats. We formed a pace line any chance we could. At one point we were cooking at 30 miles per hour. For 10 miles we had a fast pace line going, it was so much fun. Any hill that we encountered I rode it as hard as I could. I have been doing this so I don’t lose my strength during this ride, as a few people told me that may happen. Basically I would be good at long, endurance rides, but wouldn’t have the same ability to go fast. I am fortunate to have awesome ride directors that understand we need to have fast days.

We got to French Lick, oddly enough this town is a huge tourist destination. http://www.frenchlick.com/ Check out the history of this town, it’s really quite interesting. We are sleeping at this Senior Activity Center, we have the place to ourselves. The nice people at the church down the street set everything up. But we basically went on an adventure to get let into the place. First we rode to the church, the pastor instructed us to find a lady at the local market because she had the key to the center. We found the shop, Yoshi, V and Jasper went inside to talk to her. I waited outside to watch the bikes, in the meantime the local Police Chief pulls up and ask’s if I’m with 4k. He hands me the key and tells me to return it to the station in the morning. I found this to be quite amazing. Many places have just opened their doors for us, gave us food and rolled out. I’m glad they can trust us. Every time we stay at a place we make sure to clean up everything they way we found it.

We had dinner at 6pm at the church, they had so much food. It was crazy. We chowed down most of it, then the kind people who prepared the food, wanted to know more about us. So we each told a little something about ourselves. We met a man named Jerry, we had survived cancer, tomorrow we ride for him.

Shortly after dinner my knee started to act up, I think I restrained it from today’s ride. I injured it 3 weeks before the ride and had to take it easy for a while. I’ll be taking plenty of ibuprofen and icing it to make sure I recover quickly. I’ll be taking a day off tomorrow and working in the water van.

Post ride naps are great!

roads are filled with tire destroying things!