alain’s dance blog

It’s the end of Day 3. I’m writing from the United Methodist Church in Stanwood, WA, and ready to sleep!

Our hosts have been amazing up until now. On Day 1, we slept at the Peace Portal Alliance church in White Rock and got free food from friends of GlobalAFC. On Day 2, we stayed at the HUB community bike shop in Bellingham. And today, the United Methodists were kind enough to provide us with shelter and food, and Pastor John even shuttled us to his house so that we could take showers!

Here are a few pictures of the places where we stayed:

As for the cycling, it’s been as expected. As in, people told me it would hurt, and it hurts! My butt hurts, my quadriceps ache, and I’ve had occasional back and knee aches. Thank god for the shammy - without bike shorts, I think I wouldn’t be able to sit on my bike seat for another minute.

Day 1 I rode 40 miles. Day 2 was 32 miles. And Day 3 was our longest so far at 50 miles, and we’ve got 65 lined up tomorrow. We’re slowly easing into the rhythm, and I’m glad it’s planned out this way.

Day 2 drew an unexpected spontaneous dance party inside the bike shop. There will be more footage on the Global Agents for Change website, but here’s a short clip I took of Tomas.

Day 3 was full of flat farmlands, and so drafting came in handy. Drafting while cycling means to use the wind tunnel created by the front rider to save on effort, so those of us who chose to draft were cycling in tight single files along the way.

We encountered lots of roadkill - many birds and even one raccoon along the way - but otherwise, the scenery was amazing. Riding along the coastline, into the forests and down Skagit Valley into Stanwood.

This entry was posted on June 3, 2008 at 3:14 am and is filed under Bike ride to Mexico for micro-credit 2008. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.