Well, ohio sure is turning into a nice state :D This place is so damned flat it's awesome...

We left the church this morning around 7 as usual in team 'photop', with me, clare, amy, and alison. Yes, a much slower team, something i quite enjoyed :D We cruised along most of it at a nice leisurely pace of 10 mph for most of it. The sheer flatness of ohio made going very easy. Admittedly, if I had gone with my normal fast groups, I probably would be finished with my 72 mile day quite a lot sooner, but where's the fun in that?

All in all, the day was rather uneventful. I think everyonee is settling into the pacing and the long days. I was quite impressed with Amy and Alison- the did much better than I expected, and at times even exceeded my speed! These flat little hills seriously provide no contest to the appalacians, haha.

At our last water stop, we all grouped together to caravan into Cleveland. Although the city is nothing too special, the caravaning was spectacular! It was quite a scene to behold, with 2 single lines of bikers in a lane all travelling neatly. We were supposed to be filmed by a news crew on our way in, which is why we did that. But, they never showed up. Oh well, what can you expect from fox news? :p

We're staying in the dorms of case western tonight. Yay! Beds! The awesome drivers managed to get a donation of chipotle burritos for dinner, so we pigged out on that and FOUR cases of beer, haha. Drinking games were abound when Jess and I and a bunch of other people went to a bar to try the local beer. I didn't get to bed and asleep until 1am, haha. Thank god for a short day and  10 am waking tomorrow :D

What's high in the middle and round on both ends? Give you a hint %u2013
it's where we've arrived at today. That's right, Ohio! After a
relatively short day, we've arrived at Broadman, Ohio tonight. Thanks
to some wonderful route planning today, we still had quite an
adventure. The weather has been beautiful however, so there are no
complaints about the trip so far!

We started the day bright and
early at 6. We've become slightly more efficient at packing now after
Clare's pep talk last night. After some wonderful granola and yogurt
for breakfast, we set off around 7:30, and ran headlong into one of the
most brutal hills so far less than a block from where we stayed.
Normally, this hill wouldn't be a problem %u2013 it was extremely steep, but
very short. However, the extreme cold and the lack of any actual warmup
meant lots of pain and suffering. My team, the %u201CTrailblazers%u201D, was
assigned the job of backup route marking, in case the vans couldn't
stop to mark them. We set off first and blitzed up the hill at full
speed %u2013 something I regretted for the rest of the day. Part of the
problem today was that the route yesterday was far too dangerous and
packed with cars (blame Greg!). Thus, we looked at today's route and
tried to route around any dangerous roads. Unfortunately, this meant we
had to change the directions as conditions required.

Team
Trailblazer was moving full speed when we arrived at the first water
stop. After a quick stop and welcome to the rest of the team, we set
off again at top speed to mark the turns. Shortly after we left, a text
message arrived with some new directions %u2013 no problem at all, we'll
mark them as needed. We flew into New Castle, PA without incident. The
rolling hills posed very little problem for team trailblazer and our
average speed topped 16 mph. Still following the directions, we smacked
into the scariest hill we've seen so far on the trip. This monster hill
was extremely short, probably only half a mile. However, the grade was
off the charts! Figuring the directions MUST be right, we followed them
up the hill, and past it for a good 3 miles before we figured something
was wrong. Something WAS wrong %u2013 another change was made while we were
climbing the hill, and we unfortunately had to descend the scary thing
to meet with the rest of the team. Ah well, the price you pay for being
a trailblazer...

Lunch was delicious and came none too soon.
Joe's Pizza graciously donated three absolutely delicious pies, which
we scarfed down without hesitation. After lunch, Trailblazer's job was
finished, and we settled into a more sane pace. After the hectic
traffic of yesterday, the beautiful countryside was a dramatic breath
of fresh air. We were all extremely excited to see the Ohio state sign,
and there was a marked improvement in roads too! Before long, we passed
Poland and entered Broadman, excited to get to (another) Westminster
Presbyterian Church.

We showered at one of the most beautiful
YMCA's we've ever seen. The dinner spread that was laid out was
absolutely impressive! Roast chicken, sloppy joes, casseroles, and
salads all tempted our ravenous appetites, and we devoured almost all
of it.

Looking forward to a wonderful day to Cleveland tomorrow %u2013 team Trailblazer away!

-James Gao

so the fourth day sucked, a lot. we travelled 50 miles down this road whose terrain resembled 202, but traffic resembled 22. rpute 30 and 8 where seriously just awful. team 'saddle sore', originally team 'relax', consisted of me, jess, jesse, chris, and taylor. the intensity today was insane... taylor could probably smoke the lot of us for breakfast. chris unfortunately hurt his knee and got knee braces this morning at rite aide. since my silly plastic sunglasses broke, i got expensive metal ones there as well. jess got red bull there and was able to smoke us for an hour before burning out, haha. this all meant that although we were a fast group, we had too many stops, and arrived 3rd.

the rolling hills kinda sucked too. PA hills each rivalled the bellamore climb, and trying to power over them at 9 mph wears you down pretty quickly. the traffic was awful, there was neither shoulder nor respect from the drivers. jess nearly got run over and honked at, while nearly everyone was clipped by large trucks. at one point, we had to enter the road via a huge highway onramp, just prior to the pittsburg picture. to make things worse, right toward the end, there was a 1 mile climb where road contruction had ground away the surface. the ass-message was NOT welcome, to say the least.

we all blame the absent greg for this calamity :p

the church we're staying at is very spacious. we're taking showers at the ymca. unfortunatley, the dinner was woefully inadequate, with just some sandwiches. i hope breakfast will be better than the empty cereal we had this morning. the kids were cute, but it was just too cold.

so apparently my team got renamed 'team alpha' by most other groups yesterday.. which is fine, haha. we had to split  though, so i teamed with 'don't get rained on' consisting of me, 2006 chris, and ondrej. yet again, we created a new team alpha, haha. after one climb up to 2900 feet, one 1 mile climb up a 10% grade and another for 3/4 mile, we arrived at lunch at least one full hour before the second group. after sitting around for 2.5 hours at burger king waiting for the last group, we set off on the insane 3.5 mile climb of death. since the rain massively cooled off the temp, it was much much more comfortable. even the climb of deathh was nothing- i just settled into my pace and rolled right up the mountain.  found today to be much easier than yesterday- maybe i'm already getting used to this?

there was a 1 mile 9% descent today where i achieved 48.6. sadly, the truck i was drafting off of had to brake, so i could have gone higher :p ondrej had more guts than i and hit 49.9. so close! i was quite disappointed by the 3 mile descent after the climb of death though. i didn't break  even 48.6!  looks like i need a 10% grade to break 50... ah well, there's always the rockies :D

the scenery was SO beautiful today. the rolling hills, as unpleasant as they were, were something altogether different. the hills were gorgeous, and the river was amazing! like something i saw in yosemite. entering greensberg sucked though, with the traffic and construction. and this town is so hilly!

woo! Second day already! Sorry for skipping the first day - after a 76 mile day and only 2 hours of sleep (thanks for the sendoff, jaclyn and tsui x_x), i decided to "take a nap" at around 7. The next thing i know, it's probably 2 or 3 am, haha. Yesterday was fun though. Team Rock did well with me, dan, jesse, and mohammed. The major hill just prior to town was pretty brutal (at least before today, haha), but i spun up the entire way.

Today was a different story, however. Only 67 miles, but with two well marked mountain peaks. First one at 2120 feet, second at 2185. With nearly a full descent in between. And at least two smaller unmarked peaks. And on a brutally hot day, 94 degrees (36 C). At one point, a truck sign with warning lights said something about a steep ascent for 3.5 miles. Rather demoralizing, no? In any case, team "speakers" (since we had the monopoly on speakers), consisting of me, ben, chris, and hubert formed a great team. Our paces were well matched, and we all enjoyed going FAST. Chris and I both beat our max speeds on the second descent today (47 and 48 respectively), and on that descent, we covered 12 miles in 30 min. that's including the climb halfway! I still managed to climb all the mountains so far without stopping.