August 4, 2011

• Ride for Missions 2011

       First off, I do want to make the usual disclaimers. This is a bit long, so you are welcome to tune it out.   I am not a cyclist, although I have a relatively good bike, a Trek, which sits idle at the house most of the time.  But for the past several years, Marvin Beachy from our church has been trying to get me to ride the Ride for Missions, sponsored by Rosedale Mennonite Missions.  And son Robert did the ride several years ago, and really enjoyed it, so I signed up finally to ride.  This year the ride was to be from Columbus, Ohio, to Frostburg, Maryland, where CMC was holding its annual conference.  For those of you who look at a map, there are a lot of Appalachian Mountains between those two locations.  So the paper work for the ride made sure to emphasize that you need to be in excellent shape to survive…and make it.  I am not sure what make it meant, but it did not mean being carted off in a paddy wagon, I don’t think.  So I went out a couple of Saturdays and rode my bike–22 miles one time, and 30 miles the other time.  I figured that if I could ride 30 miles, I could do that twice and do 60 miles, and then gut out the rest…So that is how I found myself on a flight to Columbus, Ohio, on Friday, July, 22..supposed to leave bright and early on Saturday morning.  There were a few glitches, one when I found out that Marvin would be unable to take my bike up; this was resolved by me borrowing the leader of the ride, Wayne Yoder’s extra bike.  So that meant I would need to at least have some biking shorts, but little else in the way of equipment.  So we stopped in Sports Authority on the way to the airport, and I became the slightly embarrassed owner of biking shorts.  Then I got bumped from a flight in Memphis, which was a blessing in that it more than paid for my flight, but made me miss the initial meeting of all the bikers.  But I was there by 10 pm, turned into bed, and awaited the ride the next day.
       The next day, I got up and was getting acquainted with my bike, and I realized several things–the Camelbak backpack which was to supply my water leaked severely, and although useful for cooling me off, was not going to be useful for the trip.  So I scrambled around and got several water bottles, which probably was the best move I had made up until that time.  Then a mad scramble for my riding gloves, given to me by my wise son Robert…’you need these,’ he had told me.  But I couldn’t find them, and everybody was getting ready to go, and so I said forget it, and through my bag on the support truck, and got ready to go.  So without further ado, we were off through the city of Columbus, Ohio, headed to Zanesville, as our destination the first day.  I was initially riding slowly, and following some other bikers, but at a distance.  I had not been there when they had gone over the routes, and how they marked the roads, so I thought I would just keep following others.   We had hardly gone a mile when I looked up, and the people that I was following had completely vanished–now where too?  I looked behind me, and there was no one.  Thinking, “I am a dunce for getting lost in the first couple of miles,” I decided the best route for me was to backtrack the way I came.  I finally came across a couple of bikers, and it became apparent the other bikers knew a short cut because they were not following the road as marked…I decided that I needed to stick with someone who knew where they were going.  My companions that first day were Rod Bontrager, from Goshen, IN, and his daughter Natalie. 
       We rode on together, at a comfortable pace, when the roads were still relatively flat. We had only been riding about 10 or 15 miles when suddenly I heard a hissing sound from my back tire–my first flat tire of the trip.  Now since it was someone else’s bike, I wasn’t sure what all equipment that I had.  I was surely thankful that Rod stayed to help me get the tire fixed.  He lent me a tube, because I didn’t realize I had one in the pak under the seat, and we had a whale of a time getting the tire changed, but finally we were on our way again.  I was thinking to myself that this was going to be a long trip!  I was correct about that, but that turned out to be my only flat tire of the trip!  After motoring on a while, we came to an intersection, and here there was a lady lying next to her van close to an intersection.  They said she needed a doctor, so I stopped to see what was going on.  Here, she had been driving her van when she felt like she was going to have a seizure, and so she pulled off the road, and then promptly had a seizure.  So they had gotten her out of the van onto the ground.  She was just starting to come around, when I got there.   I did not have any equipment, but I did check her pulse and saw that she was breathing fine.  The ambulance had been called, so I decided to wait there until the ambulance came.   My companions took off down the road.  After a while, the ambulance got there and were loading the lady up, so I took on down the road.  I noticed that far ahead, Rod and Natalie had stopped.  When I came up to them, I learned that Natalie had hit her front wheel on Rod’s back wheel, and it made Natalie tumble off her bike out into the roadway.  By the grace of God, the oncoming vehicle was able to stop.  She remarkably only had a road burn on her elbow, but was otherwise okay.  With renewed respect for my riding, I decided no chances for me the rest of the trip.
      The rest of day 1 is a bit of a blur.  It kept getting hotter, and hotter, and hillier, and hillier, but by 1 pm, I was in Zanesville.  Good, I thought, I am almost there.  Little did I know that we still had 5-6 miles to go, and they were the worst hills yet.  The thermometer on my bike said it was 102 degrees, by this time, and it was so difficult going up the hills with not enough speed to get a breeze.  I think the last 6 miles took an hour, but by 2 pm made it the full 60 miles.  And I think it was at that instant that I was able to say to myself, “I think I will be able to do this.”
  Many of the riders had trouble with leg cramps that night, and I was having difficulty myself.  I also developed numbness in my left 4th and 5th fingers from not having any gloves, so I looked long and hard for them when I got to the motel.  Luckily I found them at the very bottom of the suitcase.  And although I wore them the rest of the trip, the first day had taken its toll, and I still have a bit of the numbness.  I took some extra Calcium in the form of borrowed TUMS and that seemed to take the cramps away but did not help the numbness.  We had nice motels to stay in each night, and my roommate was Nathan Buchinger from Vassar, Michigan.  Amazingly, I had difficulty sleeping after such strenuous exercise, getting awake most nights around 2-3 pm.  Certainly, the first night was with reason, because it poured buckets of rain and lightning and thunder from about 2 pm until morning.  It rained 2-3 inches, but by morning, all was just about quiet again.  So once again we headed out to tackle the hills of eastern Ohio. This to be continued, and eventually I hope to have pictures.  I am dependent on other people’s pictures, since I did not take my camera. (to be continued)

  • 10:45 pm
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