June 21, 2013
Andover, MA to Fitchburg, MA
This morning on our message board it said two freighting things--one was that they were going to start enforcing the in by 4pm rule, which meant that if we weren't at the host site by that time they would start sending out the van to pick us up, and the other was that today we were riding into Fitchburg which is the self proclaimed second hilliest town in the country. After the hills we had to do to get into Andover, none of us were excited about more hills. Luckily it was only supposed to be around 40ish miles, a break from the 70+ and 60+ days before it. The entire day we were bracing ourselves for killer hills and completely psyching ourselves out. There definitely were hills, but I don't think it was a anything like what people had built up in their minds. However, there were more than a few times when I was in my absolute lowest gear (the easiest to pedal in) and felt like I just wanted to get off, but I never did! My mantra for the day was slow and steady wins the race. Since the day was so short, a lot of people passed the lunch stop before the van had arrived and so just biked all the way to our destination and found lunch there. I ended up in the back of the pack because my group seemed to keep stopping and having awesome conversations. It was great because it is sometimes hard to talk to people while biking but I do really enjoy talking with all of them. It was also nice to give my legs a break every now and then. When we finally made it to Fitchburg, MA, we had our first experience with taking our showers at the local YMCA. A little girl that was there for camp asked us why we all had the same shirt on and her mouth literally dropped to the floor when we said we were biking to California. It was definitely one of my top 5 favorite reactions yet to telling someone what we're doing. The rest of the night we just hung out in the church as a group and had some fun rolling each others thigh muscles out (it is too painful to inflict upon yourself so we've been making other people do it instead). We have our second build day tomorrow here in Fitchburg and we're all really excited, both to be helping out the community an to be getting a break from biking.
Random pictures from today (I didn't take many):
The roller! I know that device. It hurts, but it works!
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