August 15.
This was a 100 mile day, mostly along the beach roads again. Check out the places where we had our rest stops:
A lot of people went swimming when they got to the rest stops. It helps to cool you down in the heat–that’s for sure. It also gets you covered with salt water!
This was the day that I took a fall. I pulled over into the shade, and I was pretty much stopped and just lost my balance. I somehow landed with my gluteus maximus on top of my saddle–which gave me a very deep bruise. I never looked at it until about five days later–that was one ugly bruise! Right after I fell, a police officer pulled up to see if I was ok. Which I was, though I knew that bruise was going to be a bad one.
I sat in the shade for a while and then rode on to the Ice Cream Club about three or four miles further on. Seriously good ice cream there, and it was a good place to wait. I thought that I had somehow damaged my bike in the fall, and called for a ride. Turned out I had only bent the fender in where it was rubbing the tire! Maybe I could have made it for the entire 99 miles, but I’m not totally sure I would have made it anyway.
In the evening we stayed at a huge United Methodist Church. My main goal was to get my bicycle fixed so that I could ride the next day. I was trying to adjust the brakes because I thought that was the problem (as did one or two others) but it was only the fender. Our trip leader, Connor, found the problem right away and fixed it just as quickly.