random thoughts from days 1 and 2

some of these thoughts have been brewing in my head for the last week or so, others are more informative of my trip so far.





1. Hair-
So after getting to orientation an hour early on Tuesday, I was told to do something for an hour, so me and Katie went to Salem to see a reinactment of the Salem Witch Trials. Afterwards, she wanted to get a cup of coffee, and I used the opportunity to get a serious haircut. As Katie said when she first saw me, "I leave you alone for 5 minutes, and this is what you do?" The haircut is definately a little severe, but most of the day its under my helmet or a hat anyways, so its actually helped me stay much cooler in the non airconditioned church we have been staying at for orientation. In addition, I also shaved my legs (very silky and smooth), also to keep me cooler in my process of reacclimating to heat 24-7.



2. Bike Accidents-
in the last couple of days, several of my friends from Philly have been involved in bike accidents involving other automobiles. Some of them, like Brenton Schwartz, wound up "lucky", and wound up with only a broken bike. Others, like Tyler Bauer, wound up physically hurt (I haven't heard any new updates, but I know he broke his hip in 4 places and is probably done with racing for the summer). Charlie from Temple was hit earlier this spring, along with a guy on the Penn Team. Either someone really hates Temple Cycling, or people just really need to start paying better attention to cyclists around them.

3. Bike deals-
www.Chainlove.com
check it out, one item offered at a time for insanely discounted prices until it sells out

4. Team Type I- A teammate at Penn is racing across America on an eight man squad for the second year in a row as part of RAAM. Last year, his team finished in 5 days, 15 hours

4. Orientation- The better part of the past 2 days have been spent doing orientation type stuff
It's been boring getting through alot of this stuff, and I'm quite surprised that for alot of people this is new information to them. Something that is particularly frustrating to me is that some people give wrong information, regarding bike maintenance and repair, which leads to bad habits. Othertimes people give more information than people want to hear or can handle at that moment, which is equally as unproductive.

5. Shakedown ride- Today we went for a dress rehersal of our first 20 mile ride to Andover tomorrow. Rode along the shore in the beautiful town of rever for a nice 15 mile spin. Tomorrow will also be a neutral day meaning we go slow, but after that I'm free to ride whatever speed I wish, which will thankfully be faster than the 10 mph average speed we set today.

6. Generosity- I'm beginning to realize how big a deal this ride is to many people. So far we've been treated to some excellent meals complements of the church that has graciously hosted us, and after the group leaders gave their presentation today, you could see how important this trip meant to one of the pastors and his wife. The wife told us how what we were doing was what was right in America today, which was few and far between everything else going on the world at this moment.

I also got to spend time today after everything with one member of our group who has all of $10 to her name for the entire trip, yet felt the need to come out on Bike and Build and help others. This incredible invidual has been self supported her entire life, putting herself through school and clearly working extremely hard between her four jobs and being a full time student. She wanted to do this trip after hearing about it because as she said " I may have ten dollars, but there are many people who have even less than me, so I guess I should consider myself lucky and look to help out." This kind of talk really makes you think of how fortunate I've been my entire life, where I havent had to worry about my next meal, or where I'd be sleeping the next night.

I'd love to write more, but theres an 11pm curfew that I'm running periously close to breaking, so I must be headed off to bed (the fact that I'm an architect major, and never get sleep apparently carries no weight here, as they are pretty stringent on the rules.) I'm not quite done, but Ill finish up tomorrow and write about tomorrow's adventures, if I get internet access that is.