the race across america

annapolis, my new favorite city. naval academy anyone?

recently, meaning a month ago, I travelled across the country with my mother, brother and sister. we flew to new york, visited the smith family farm and then stopped in gettsyburg to fulfill the dreams of our resident civil war buff. continuing our trip we drove through lancaster county and frantically took pictures of the Amish people we passed on the road (sorry!) then we spent some time in dc fulfilling my own dreams before stopping over in annapolis.

recap:  palmyra, ny; gettysburg, pa; lancaster county, pa; washington dc; annapolis, md.

while we were doing all of these things (in the space of a week) my father was biking across the country. yes, he was biking.across.america. the entire country. the race is 3000 miles and this year started in oceanside and ended in annapolis. he was on a team with 8 men and a sizable crew. we arrived at the finish line in annapolis at 2 am to meet him at the end of his 6 day 11 hour and 21 minute race. turns out he didn't actually arrive until 5 am, but despite staying up most of the night it was the happiest thing to see him cross that finish line.
one of his teammates crashed on that last day (rough transition and a broken chain and 40 mph) and he sat with us as we waited. we asked him about the race and how it worked. he began to look at the list of checkpoints and pointed out one in particular. it was somewhere in arizona, still at the beginning of the race. he looked at it and said, "this was where I started thinking, 'I can do hard things, I can do hard things.'" this blew my mind. I know that riding a bike across america isn't be the easiest thing, but I kind of thought that they were all superman and it would be a cinch for them. but talking with him, and hearing my dad describe it, I realized that it was a hard thing. but they did it. and that's what amazes me and gives me just a little hope. I've kind of taken this to be my mantra and I think it will be for awhile (thanks, chris). it may be cheesy, but I can do hard things, I can do hard things.

crossing the finish line, 5 am

sunrise

the bike of all bikes: it's pretty stylish

we were sleepless. the one in the middle especially.

 dad and chris, look at their medals!
ps dad, you impress me all the time. I hope that some of that ability to ride 3000 miles was passed on to me. not that I'll ever try and find out...