Riding with Abby and the Hoosier Gym on the way to Richmond

 This was a super fun day. The highlight was getting to ride with my daughter Abby. Abby is a fantastic cyclist who rode with the Kappa Alpha Theta cycling team in the little 500.  She was one of the best time trial riders on the IU campus, and she won rookie of the year in 2022 in the year her team took second place overall. So naturally we wore our little 500 jerseys together.

Abby and ME

Abby and I led the group out for about the first 10 miles, on our way to Knightstown to see the Hoosier gym. I was so happy because the tour directors had no idea that we were riding three blocks away from this famous movie location and said yes when I asked them if we could all stop.  My new friends had absolutely the best time there. 

Front:  Stuart, John, Alan, Tanny, Jodie, Judd, Carol, Barb
Back:  Odie, Bill, Paula, Peyton, Me, Abby, Dana, John, Jim, Jens, Maggie

The staff gave us a great tour, people had a huge amount of fun shooting baskets  (but not making many …😂)

Alan...not coming close

and snapping pictures and checking out the locker room with the famous quotes from the movie.

My team is on the floor!

The ride itself was enjoyable, cruising along the Historic National Road US 40. 

It was cool and overcast and just a light breeze so the riding was pretty easy.

One of my favorite moments was turning into the driveway at Earlham College. For backstory, about 20 years ago I started doing the RAIN (Ride across Indiana) with friends. It’s a one-day 162 mile ride that starts in Terre Haute and finishes in Richmond at the Earlham campus.  It was the first ultra cycling event I’d ever done and I was really uncertain the first year if I could make it. So these two cuties were there to cheer me on and congratulate me when I finished.

Here is Abby and me at the same spot two decades later  

All my new cycling friends remarked on how fortunate I was to have my daughter riding along. I couldn’t agree more.

We did have more than a little trouble with car accidents. First one of the riders who joined us in Champaign for the last third of the ride got spun around and knocked off his bike in a slow motion collision at an intersection near our first SAG.  He’s shaken up but okay.

Then 20 minutes later, at that exact same intersection, a few of us still in the SAG watched as a car ran a red light and T-boned another car.   Our call to 911 went something like this. “Hi, it’s us again, same intersection, this time a car hit another car.”

We made it all the way into Richmond safely. Abby and I grabbed lunch and as we were coming back to the hotel, first one police car, then another and another and another and another, +3 ambulances go racing by us. And stop right outside our hotel.  And my first thought was, oh no, I hope that’s not one of us.   It wasn’t. But there was a nasty three car collision just outside the hotel. Another huge T-bone crash up.  I would like to get the heck away from cars for a few days.

We have a stout challenge in front of us. About 400 miles over the next four days to transit completely across Ohio and land in Erie Pennsylvania.  I think peddling away from home will be much less fun than peddling toward it.

Some bonus photos of my support squad after a few other RAIN rides ending in Richmond