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Today’s teamwork felt better. One of the reasons it worked for me was because we had a great discussion last night over dinner. That dinner, by the by, was insanely good. I had a greek salad, bruschetta and a pesto tortellini. Unbelievably tasty. At any rate, everyone loved their meal and after the great time we had at the festival, we began to open up about our experiences on the road.
For some the pace was too fast. For some there wasn’t enough communication. For me I was missing the fun and individuality -- part of which I express through my picture taking. The honesty and discussion did us all well and it showed today on the ride.
One thing I’m not doing well enough is sleeping. It wears on me. I had a very, VERY hard time getting up this morning. It’s hard anyway, but when I’m lacking in sleep, my happiness fades a bit -- the silliness that helps me see things more openly. Then the bitterness seeps in. The pain I’m feeling throbs more deeply. Today I had tremendous pain in my groin (the chafing). It’s always there, but when I’m not well-rested, it goes through the roof.
At any rate, we made it. And five days into having Raul on board, I must say it is wonderful to have him. He’s an inspiration and a wealth of knowledge. He told me about a race in Puerto Vallarta and said he’d like to stay in touch with me after we’re done here so we can talk about maybe hooking up down there. I’m not fluent in Spanish, by all means, but I can do a bit of chatting -- enough to make Raul smile at my attempts.
I was particularly energetic when we finished the ride and excited about out campground tonight. Turns out it’s a great RV park -- clean and full of people (sold out). Nice amenities -- shower, pool, bike rentals (like I want that...). Nice. At any rate, I picked up some food at the market I’d been thinking about all day and Raul and I put together an awesome cookout that consisted of: tomato/cucumber salad, guacamole, peppers and onions grilled with garlic, BBQ corn with green chiles and burgers (veggie style for me, of course). What a meal. We’ve had a lot of great ones on this trip, but something about eating outside and being part of the prep always makes me that much more satisfied.
I took the time to actually look at our last six ride days today. I gasped when I looked at the last day from Philly to Ocean City. It suddenly became very real. I’ve avoided looking at that because I don’t want to get ahead of myself -- I don’t want to lose my being in the moment. At this point, it is real. Six more ride days -- that’s it. There are some significant challenges road wise -- particularly over the next three days. But you know what, we have experience that tells me we’ll be fine. We’ll overcome whatever needs to be overcome. The fact that we’ve come together as a team underscores this.
Random thought of the day: I’ve heard that Eskimos have dozens if not hundreds of names for snow -- because they live around it so much, they notice the finer details and label it for all the different conditions. The road is like that for us -- not that we’ve named all the different types, but I can tell you the road that you drive on is not the same as the road that you bike on. We are sensitive to so many different things because of perspective. It’s all in how you look at things.
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