Tour life quickly assumes its own rhythm; after just a couple of days it’s like we’ve been doing this together forever.
Loading, unloading, sleeping on the floor, eating out of coolers in the back of a support vehicle, grabbing a snack at every opportunity to replace burned calories–those start to seem normal. You learn to push past the “I need a nap” feeling because there simply isn’t time.By this point our riders have exceeded their training. Now it’s about courage and perseverance and refusing to stop when stopping would be the easy thing. They keep pedaling because their teammates are pedaling and because they believe in sacrifice and because they’re riding for kids who were destined for slavery but now are free.
We do this as a team, a community, and we all know community is difficult. A bunch of strangers tossed together in this stressful environment are certain to experience conflict. We’re no exception. The key, for me, is to remember the dream. When I do that, when I focus on why we’re here, it’s easier to keep most of the other stuff in perspective.
We talked as a team last night about service, about what it means to serve and the differences between helping and serving. We’re trying to function as a team of servant leaders, to learn better how to take an attitude of empowering service home with us.
A few sights from a day on the tour:
Life on the road: cyclists stop at the support vehicle for snacks, water, and Gatorade, then jump back on their bikes.
Bikes, shoes, helmets, bottles–all in line and ready the night before.
On a hot day, Larry wanted a cold treat without leaving his bike. The DQ drive-thru made perfect sense.
The days go fast. We’re more than 330 miles into the journey already. Hard to believe there are only 3 days of cycling left.