Boy oh boy was this a day to remember for various reasons.
We started out the day with a stern warning by our leaders to get over to a nearby location by a certain time. There we would be meeting a police escort for our bridge crossing across the mighty Mississippi.
I left in one of the first waves of bikers to head to the rendezvous location. The morning was a little rainy, so I had all my raingear on and my taillight flashing. After crossing one set of railroad tracks, I realized that my taillight was no longer on my bike (need to fix its tenancy to fall off). Since I knew where it fell off (I heard the faint thud), I headed back to grab it, leaving the rest of my riding group waiting for me. As I crossed back over the railroad tracks, the rain signal came on and a train started approaching. Not a big deal, until the train stops in the crossing. Not 15 minutes goes by before the rest of the bikers behind me start showing up. As we waited for the train to move, we entertained ourselves with impromptu dancing, singing, and group huddles to keep out the cold. It didn't help that the rain started pouring viscously while we waited.
After about an hour of waiting, we took shelter in a truck repair building. That's when we learned that the train always blocks that intersection for 1-2 hours in the morning. Needless to say, we were pretty late getting to the rendezvous and were all very cold by the time that we got there. Forgetting any boundaries within the group, we all got under our big blue tarp at the rendezvous and cuddled to get warm.
The rest of the ride continued to be wet wet wet. Eventually we got to our host for the night, which was in the locker room of a high school football team. Since there was no host on site and no dinner prepared, we headed out in search of food donations on our way in. My group did a pretty good job in this with getting a few pizzas and some Chinese food for everyone.
We ended the night with our in-group affordable housing presentations (finally out of the way!) and all fell right asleep.
We started out the day with a stern warning by our leaders to get over to a nearby location by a certain time. There we would be meeting a police escort for our bridge crossing across the mighty Mississippi.
I left in one of the first waves of bikers to head to the rendezvous location. The morning was a little rainy, so I had all my raingear on and my taillight flashing. After crossing one set of railroad tracks, I realized that my taillight was no longer on my bike (need to fix its tenancy to fall off). Since I knew where it fell off (I heard the faint thud), I headed back to grab it, leaving the rest of my riding group waiting for me. As I crossed back over the railroad tracks, the rain signal came on and a train started approaching. Not a big deal, until the train stops in the crossing. Not 15 minutes goes by before the rest of the bikers behind me start showing up. As we waited for the train to move, we entertained ourselves with impromptu dancing, singing, and group huddles to keep out the cold. It didn't help that the rain started pouring viscously while we waited.
After about an hour of waiting, we took shelter in a truck repair building. That's when we learned that the train always blocks that intersection for 1-2 hours in the morning. Needless to say, we were pretty late getting to the rendezvous and were all very cold by the time that we got there. Forgetting any boundaries within the group, we all got under our big blue tarp at the rendezvous and cuddled to get warm.
The rest of the ride continued to be wet wet wet. Eventually we got to our host for the night, which was in the locker room of a high school football team. Since there was no host on site and no dinner prepared, we headed out in search of food donations on our way in. My group did a pretty good job in this with getting a few pizzas and some Chinese food for everyone.
We ended the night with our in-group affordable housing presentations (finally out of the way!) and all fell right asleep.
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