DALMAC - Year 2

Well, we started September out with an exciting bike trip.  We rode the DALMAC for the second year.  (Do you like how I just pretended like it's still the beginning of September and didn't mention the fact that I'm a month behind in blogging??  Pretty sneaky right?)  This year Samone selected a new route for us to ride, the 4 day East Route.  Last year, you may remember, we did the 4 day West Route and we rode about 323 miles.  It was an amazing experience and it made us want to do it again this year.  This year on the 4 day East we were scheduled for approximately 260 miles.  We didn't train nearly as hard this year, but seriously, I'm not sure that it would have made any difference whatsoever.  It was a rough ride all around.  We got all prepped in the weeks before.  We rode, gathered equipment, tweaked equipment and generally tried to get everyone organized.  I bought a new pretty road bike, a Dawes Shelia.  We borrowed an older bike for Freddy to ride and we got new tires and all kinds of other miscellaneous things.  Last year it was only Samone, Mike and I riding.  This year it was a large cast including, Samone, my brother-in-law, Scott, Mike, Freddy, Cheryl (Scott's sister), Steven (Scott's nephew) and of course, me.  A much bigger group to wrangle!  We finally got everything together though and Freddy, Mike and I headed over Wednesday evening to pick up our registration information.  Registration was interestingly different for me in comparison to last year.  Last year I was so nervous and worried about the whole thing and this year I barely wondered about our route.

The next morning, Thursday morning, was Day 1!  Freddy had his second football game on Thursday, so he was out for the first day.  Mike and I got up about 5am and got ready to go.  We left much earlier than necessary because we were meeting Hilary and Ricardo in East Lansing for breakfast before we began.  They were in town for the weekend for Hilary's brother's wedding and this would be the only chance we would have to see them.  You know me, always trying to do everything!  So we had a very nice breakfast at O'Neils and then headed towards the MSU Pavilion, where we would begin our journey.  We arrived and the rest of our rag-tag crew was there and ready to ride.  We kissed our supporters goodbye and we hit the road.  We had a nice ride down through the MSU campus and headed north out of town on Park Lake Road.  Mike and I especially enjoyed the ride through campus... just like the old days.  About 30 minutes into our ride, just north of town we ran into our first few problems.  Namely, Samone had something wrong with her tire and it was beginning to rain.  We all pulled off together and Mike fixed Samone's tire by trading it out with his own (foreshadowing).  Off we headed again and Scott and Cheryl were treated to a few small hills.  I'm pretty sure that they were wondering what they had gotten themselves into!!  This first day, we decided to all ride together in the morning to our lunch stop at my Mom's and then we would ride our own speeds and meet up at the stopping point for the night.  We made it all the way to Ovid when the tire that Mike had traded out from Samone's bike went down and I mean way down (See how effective foreshadowing is?).  We waited as Mike then proceeded to change a flat tube.  With the new tube in place, we were up and riding again all the way to lunch at Mom's house.  We had some delicious homemade pizza for lunch.  Pizza on the first day has become our tradition and I plan to keep it on every multi-day ride from here to eternity!  Sooo good!  Mike spent much of our lunch break tweaking bikes with everything from changing tires to adjusting seats and handlebars.  I, on the other hand, spent my break looking over my last minute purchases that were delivered to my Mom's place and eating way too much pizza.  In particular I was excited to see some energy gels in my package.  One that I bought was the brand GU and was Chocolate Outrage in flavor.  I was really looking forward to trying it out.

After lunch we had a nice flat land ride all the way to Midland... in the pouring rain.  It was pretty disappointing to ride in the wind and rain, but as we would discover in the days to come, this was the easy day.  Once we all arrived at the Bullock Creek Middle School, we commenced with showering and eating, two of the most important things to you when you ride over 50 miles in a day.  

Then Samone and I decided that we would be the two elected to drive one hour back to St. Johns to watch Freddy's football game and then take Freddy back to Midland with us.  Samone and I were feeling the days ride on our drive to the game, but we both perked up once we got there.  We had pretty good weather, no more rain and not too chilly.  The team played great and killed Jackson Northwest 34-7.  Then Samone drove us back to Midland while I tried to stay awake to monitor her driving.  It was tough for me to stay awake!  Freddy helped by chatting from the back seat.  Once back, we had a snack and headed to bed.  Mike and I elected to take the tent with the huge queen size air mattress, which was incredibly comfortable.  But it also turned out to be extremely noisy. A huge thunderstorm came through that knocked down tents and trees throughout the night.  We luckily only had to deal with a few drips and the crazy noise.  So to sum up Day 1, late start, crappy weather, lots of delays and a restless night.  You can imagine how much we were hoping that Friday would be a better day...  to be continued.