Day 8: Hard Day

Today, I started out thinking about my best friend, Julie , who was taken much too soon in a car accident along with her entire family–mother, father, and 4 kids, in a horrible car accident in Arizona. It was south of Flagstaff on Interstate 17, while the family was taking their last vacation together as a family. They were on their way to Phoenix to visit more family when coming down a steep road, a semi truck tried to brake and burned up his brakes and went careening into Julie’s family’s car. It was said if the impact did not kill them instantly, the ball of fire that engulfed the car immediately after certainly did. I have never been to Arizona and realized we were biking about 3 hours away from the accident site, and it made me miss Julie very much. She and I laughed so much together and I have never had a friend like her or as close as she and I were. I miss her every day, but I know she is an angel on my shoulder. I have heard that the runaway truck emergency lanes on those mountain roads, like the one we biked down in CA were brought about as a result of accidents like the one Julie, Lori, Kevin and Brian died in along with their parents Mary Ann and Jim.

Maybe because of the above or maybe because it was just a hard day, I bonked at about mile 49 today. I just felt like I couldn’t go further,but of course we had to. So we stopped, found some minimal shade ate some fruit and nuts and lots of fluids and got back on the bike. We thought we had about 5 more miles to go, but were so surprised to find we had miscalculated and the sag stop was just a mile or so ahead–that was a great surprise!

We are camping in beautiful Catalina State Park in AZ and looking forward to a day off the bike tomorrow. Our bodies and minds could use the rest!