We May Be Ready For May...

We are twinsies now (I'm the one in the black helmet)

I like May.  In the Central Valley, the weather is nice, the air feels clean and it just feels good to be out on a bike.  Of course this year, May also means that we are inside of a month until we fly up to Canada--actually three weeks from tomorrow if anyone is keeping track besides me.  As we get closer, I think now we are in the stages of final tinkering mixed with last minute rushes to order things we didn't realize we needed until now.

Knights Ferry--a favorite spot in the Central Valley

Heading back with some of our group. Nice form!

Historic covered bridge at Knights Ferry

Anyway, here is our update:

Game of Thrones?  Part of the scenery this week!

First, solid week of riding.  Not that we got in a crazy amount of miles, but we did ride a fair amount. We had two rides over 32 miles, one of which we pushed some hard speeds with a group.  The second ride, which we did on Saturday, was in the lower foothills to a place called Knights Ferry and was a beautiful ride which included some historical buildings and a ride through the bridge. We also finally got some rolling hills. That is something that has been missing from our rides up until now: rolling terrain.  Our ride had about 1300 feet of climbing but really didn't feel that bad because the climbs were either short or not a very high grade.  Katelyn felt better after that ride than she did on a lot of the flat rides actually so I was pretty happy about that.  Also,  this week Katelyn went over 1,000 miles riding for the year which is a big milestone.  Of course compared to the 1850 miles in 30 days?  Bring on the pain!

Next, we had our first visitors at our house this week as new hosts on Warm Showers.  As a recap, Warmshowers.com is a website that allows people to offer their home up to touring cyclists passing through.  While the town I live in is not a hugely popular area with tour cycling, we still get calls from time to time from people typically cycling through on their way to Yosemite.  This time, there was a young couple named Ben and Whitney from Minnesota that were cycling from San Francisco all the way to Maine! The crazy thing is that they had literally zero cycling experience.  I'm not talking zero tour cycling, I am talking zero cycling experience period! It just goes to show that a willing attitude is the most important thing; I had to admire their courage biting off such a huge feat and it will be fun to follow them as they progress. It certainly made me feel as if Katelyn and I are pretty prepared physically by comparison.   We will be hosting another cyclist from Spain this Tuesday that is cycling around the world!

Ben and Whitney, our guests, starting with their bikes touching the ocean.

Third, a couple speedbumps this week.  As we have been riding, I noticed that Katelyn keeps adjusting her shoes and complaining about her feet hurting.  It turns out that her feet have continued to grow and the shoes I bought her for the trip are already too small.  These are NOT the types of  issues I want to be dealing with on the road and so we are doing a mad scramble to make sure that we have what we need now.  Also,  Katelyn is at a point where she is providing feedback on her cycling shorts and apparently some of them are super comfortable while others are miserable.   The trip costs keep adding up, but shoes and shorts are not the places where I am going to tell her to just suck it up and live with it.  Comfort on a bike is a big big deal and unfortunately costs a lot at times.

We chose a bike trailer, they chose panniers.  Both work well.

Finally, a fundraising update.   The Children's Cancer Research Fund has really become a great organization to work with.  They are very engaged, supportive, and appreciative of the donations they receive.  Katelyn's efforts propelled her to the #2 fundraiser out of 33,200 participants in the Great Cycle Challenge, although as of today, she got bumped back down to #4.   I hope we can get her back up the list--it's just a click away!
http://greatcyclechallenge.com/riders/katelyncardoza
Also, THANK YOU to all that have already donated and also those who have shared our ride pages on Facebook.  It is by far the biggest tool that has driven support for our ride!

So there we are.  3 weeks away.  And just maybe, we may be ready...for May.