100 Miler Accomplished

My Father-in-law and Mother-in-law continue to amaze the AARP crowd. The following is an email from Boogie-

Yesterday Nancy and I rode our 12th annual Katy Flatlander 100 mile bicycle ride -- well, we really rode 103 miles but that is another story.

We hoped that Sunday would be like Saturday -- i.e., no wind and overcast. However, our hopes were in vain. 10 minutes before the start of the ride, it started raining and then it started downpouring. A large number of riders left without riding, I spoke with one of the UH professors today who was supposed to ride with 2 other professors -- they never got out of their car due to the rain, did not pick up there packets, but drove over to Denny's for breakfast. He couldn't believe that we had ridden -- especially 100 miles.

We were stubborn and started in the downpour and were immediately detoured out of the way by 3 miles. Gosh, I told Nancy that I was already tired after three miles and technically we were just beginning the 100.

Nancy and I both agree that we want to do one 100 mile ride annually. If it isn't Katy, then it is something else. After mentally preparing for Katy and after getting up at 4:30 AM for the ride, we weren't gonna let a little rain stop us. As I told her, "it is either today or later in July or August." So, it was a go for us from the moment we got there. Did we like it? No, but challenges like that make you appreciate the comforts of modern living.

We were soaked and wet for the first 25 miles -- by then it had stopped raining and was clearing. In fact, for us it was clearing too much because for about 3 hours we had no clouds but were in the sun. By the way, our socks were soaked most of the way. It is miserable to have wet feet while pedaling for about 40,000 stokes (believe me, I counted them!).

The thunderstorms were playing havoc with the wind so we would have a strong head wind and hope that it would help us out as a tail wind when we made the turn back to Katy. However, wouldn't you know it -- as a headwind it was bending over the weeds in the bar ditch and slowing us down to 10 mph but as a tail wind it died and we could go only about 15 or 16 mph.

John Gregorcyk also rode the 100 miles (well, 103 miles) and finished about one hour ahead of us.

Thanks be to God for giving us the ability and bull headed[ness] to do the 100!