We did it!!

Saturday’s Ride for Roswell was absolutely awesome–bike theft and last-minute T-shirt making notwithstanding, it could NOT have gone better.

Here’s how things went down since I last surfaced…

On Thursday night (yes, that would be a bit over 24 hours before the ride… we do things on Puerto Rican time around here), at approximately 11:59 p.m. (ditto), Isa and I finally got down to the business of decorating our team T-shirts.  We debated, measured, practiced on a scrap shirt, freaked out at a few snafus, and ended the night with six lovely T-shirts and two very smudgy hands:

On Friday afternoon, after much taking of bikes back and forth from the bike shop for new tubes and the like (lesson 1: check ALL bikes at once lest you want the bike store people to think you’re stalking them with your never-ending presence), we decided to scrap the front detailing we had planned to put on the T-shirts.  The design (by our teammate Ally) was too adorable and intricate to try and get it done in such a short period of time… which led to us learning a very hard lesson 2 (paint takes WAY longer to dry than it says on the bottle).

On Saturday morning, we all sprang out of bed, padded booties ready to hit the road, and started the bike loading at 6:30 a.m.:

Followed by a pre-sweat, pre-stink team photo session (mostly to record the shirts for posterity in case the paint fell off):

After which we remembered one VERY important lesson from last year (make sure the car you’re following on the highway is actually a team car, and not someone else’s, lest you follow someone who’s lost and lose half your team) and learned a new one (lesson 3:  fasten the bike stand properly to the back of the car and pull over if the bikes threaten to fly off the rack on the highway).  Bikes unharmed and still attached to the vehicle, and non-highway route taken, we reached the starting point in plenty of time to prepare and ham it up:

And then we were off!

The ride route was similar to last year’s twenty-mile route (along the Niagara River and looping back to UB’s campus) with a bit of a longer loop added in by the water.  Had it been a sunny day with no wind, it would have been a very comfortable ride.  However, the lake and weather conspired to create one long, loooong wall of wind for the first ten miles or so, which were completely exhausting (especially on a bike heavier than the one I’m used to riding).  I felt incredibly wimpy and may have quietly whined about it a few times.

However, the rest stops–and the rest stop peanut butter and jelly sandwiches–seemed to take the edge off my frustration, and of which Ally managed to eat FIVE during the entire race (yes, five FULL sandwiches):

As did the show of various sisters and teammates removing long-sleeved underlayers in public without flashing anyone:

Thankfully, once the wind ended and the hills subsided–because did I mention that, along with the wind, we had HILLS?–the ride was beyond enjoyable.   We chattered and kept near each other,  and the four of us who rode slower than the other two team members made quite a lot of appreciation ruckus for the volunteers and spectators along the route…

… Which was over SO quickly!  Before we knew it, we were back at UB’s campus, and since the riders had been a bit more spaced out time-wise we were even able to ride our bikes in through the finish line:

We arrived, we met up with the support team of Mr. Man, Miggi, and Magdi, found the other two team members, and proceeded to A) be hams and B) cheer like psychos for about a half hour as more riders came in through the finish.

And then we ate some well-earned Italian sausages, as if we hadn’t eaten our weight in peanut butter sandwiches already (ahem, Ally):

It was a GREAT day–and we raised $2,396 for cancer research, woot woot!  Thanks SO MUCH to all the lovely donating and supporting peeps; we couldn’t have done it without you!

As for the big question:  will Papa’s Pedallers ride 44 miles next year?

(Um… Ask me in a week, when the memory of the first ten windy miles has faded).