Hey everyone, Stacy and Eric here,
So our first day started off pretty well. A special thanks to Gary and Tammy O’Brien. who gave us a great night sleep and a tasty breakfast. We left around 5:40, literally dipped our bikes into Lake Ponchatrain (after a quick 12 mile “out-and-back” to get there from Covington, LA, and headed off. We discovered how strong Eric and Kevin are on the bike, not that much of a surprise. We averaged about 18-20 mph, we were expecting to finish up the ride pretty quickly but then a small staple was placed in the nicely paved rode and pierced my tire (Stacy). It was our first flat, and let me just say that I did not get one flat the whole 500 miles last year, so it’s not because I’m a girl. So that was exciting, good thing Jimmy and Mike had the supplies and skills to fix it in a jiffy. So about 30 minutes later, Eric was wondering if I could tell if he had a flat. I looked over telling him that he would be able to tell and as I looked Kevin who was in front of me decided to check out Eric’s tire. Bad IDEA! only because he was drafting Jimmy pretty closely at the time. Jimmy made a little movement or slowed down and Kevin hit his back tire and fell to the side. He managed to fall pretty well (I got to see it). He crunched up and managed to scrape just the side of his ankle and knee…and face. 😀 he still looks pretty and there wasn’t blood all over the place despite Kevin’s initial thought. But Kevin was all good and was able to keep riding. Unfortunately Jimmy’s back wheel was messed up due to the direct contact it had with Kevin’s front wheel so that took a while to fix. Hopefully Jimmy’s wheel doesn’t come off tomorrow. What else…. it was HOT, but it is so amazing how we sweat so much! so we stay cool. OOOOKAY, here is ERIC!!! (I created the title by the way) 😀
Eric here. First off the parishes of Holy Trinity and St. Paul’s of Columbia, Mississippi are awesome–Father Martin Gillespie was so friendly, funny, and filled with the Holy Spirit! They treated us with so much love, care, and hospitality. The food was absolutely amazing! One thing that stuck out in Father’s homily was how he asked if Jesus were to need our help right now wouldn’t you want to be one of the first to get in line? In today’s Gospel Jesus said “whatever you do to the least of my people you do to me”. We need to protect the lives of the most defenseless, the unborn. I thought that was a pretty cool way of thinking about it. Also one of the sweetest moments of the day was being in the back of the bike riding line and seeing four other teammates wearing the same “jerseys” fighting for the same cause. After today I am confident our team has the stuff it’s going to take to make it through the trip. Look for some videos on the website soon!
Day 1 summary: 85 miles, 1 flat, 1 crash, high of 90 degrees, 5mph headwind
Signing off,
Eric and Stacy