They did it! While Val and I were at the wedding in Montana, my sister Abby (with her friend Claudia) in Illinois biked 54 miles on Sunday on our behalf. Fifty-four miles!! What a goddess of steely thighs and diligent hydration!
If you are tuning in late, I should explain that Abby hatched this glorious cockamamie fund-raising idea a few weeks ago, shortly after the news of Val’s diagnosis, because she can’t stand sitting around doing nothing when she could be biking 54 miles in the sweaty heat of a Midwestern summer to help us out. So she signed up a bunch of sponsors, designed some great t-shirts and tuned up her bike.
The original plan was to bike from Carbondale, where she lives, to Cairo (pronounced Kay-ro) Illinois, which has an enticing reputation as a creepy ghost town. When this plan was further explored, however, Abby realized the route to Cairo resembled a lasagna noodle in its ups and downs and was on shoulderless, winding roads. So instead she and her friend Claudia biked from Harrisburgh to Karnak on a gravelly but lovely rails-to-trails path, incurring less risk to life and limb from Illinois drivers. That was a 45-mile ride, so at the end of the day she kept going to round the total off at 54 miles. Phew.
During this time the only exertion required of me in Montana was a chicken dance.
Abby reports:
“We had a blast. The day was overcast with just enough of a menace to the clouds to keep us moving, but never enough to make us scared. The whole trip was on a rails-to-trails path covered with crushed gravel, which made the going a little rough at times (sometimes it acted just like quicksand, at other times like a bucking horse), but basically it was not bad. We averaged 10.5 miles per hour, and stopped every 12 miles to stretch, pee, and refill our water bottles. Neither of us really started to hurt until mile 41 at which point my knees started to point out that 50+ miles is a really long way, and I wasn’t getting any younger you know.
“At Karnak, population 230, we stopped at the only diner in town and ordered some much-needed food.” Meanwhile, in a surprising side story, Abby’s old friends Megan and Andy were en route from Peoria to their home in New Orleans. With exquisite timing they managed to arrive at the Karnak diner five minutes after Abby and Claudia for a short reunion and celebration before everyone returned to their respective roads.
Click here to see the valiant bikers, the old railroad tunnel they went through, the diner, and the jungly unchecked summer growth overarching the bike path.
Thanks, Abby and Claudia! You inspire us! You amaze us! You lessen our urge to complain about biking in the rain!
D
p.s. If you are interested in buying one of the trend-setting bike-a-thon t-shirts, email Abby (agitlitz@hotmail.com) quick-like. She hopes to get her order in within the week. (Also, she may try to change the sign on the shirt to say Karnak instead of Cairo.)
Abby and Claudia were so beautifully ecstatic when we caught up with them. They may have been a little tired, but they were both in great spirits and so happy to have spent their Sunday on their bikes. True goddesses.