Bloomington, IN

Yesterday when we crossed into Indiana we changed to Eastern Time which was my fourth time zone of the trip and made me realize how close we are to DC. The ride today was quick with a noon arrival and 11:30-55 mile rack point; we had some pressure to keep the crew stops short and ride fast. By 11:00 we were at mile 57 and about 2 miles from stage up when disaster struck. We were riding downhill and looking ahead to merge over because of a right turn lane ahead when the leader of our paceline caught an edge merging from the shoulder to the road and went down hard. Fortunately we all managed to dodge the downed cyclist and quickly secured the scene by blocking traffic and I quickly grabbed my phone to notify the crew chief that a cyclist had gone down. There is a real danger to cycling and in this case everything worked out well and he finished the ride out with nothing more then a few scrapes and bumps, but an incident like this makes us appreciate how fortunate we are to do this ride and really enjoy every minute of it.

Once at stage up we prepared for arrival at Stone Belt, an organization similar to the Arc. We arrived at Stone Belt to a very warm welcome and a great group of clients. Stone Belt was having an outside fair with games and face painting. After lunch we played basketball and hung out for a few hours together.

Stone Belt Today

Brenda and I

Bingo!!!

We saddled up and rode the last few miles of the day to the Indiana University Pi Kappa Phi chapter house. The house is incredible and we were honored with two very distinguished Pi Kapp's including Dr. Phil Summer, past national president and Ledford Carter a 93 year old alumni from Mercer University. The house cooks prepared a delicious steak dinner for us including red skin potatoes, broccoli, and fresh dinner rolls.


After dinner Ledford drove us around campus and showed us some of the building he use to lecture at and answered lots of questions we had about the campus. We rounded out the evening with a trip to get ice cream where I had an amazing mint chocolate chip cone.