The Indians game was a ton of fun on August 2nd, but it ended pretty late after the fireworks show. This meant that most of the guys got about 6 hours or less of sleep for our ride into Niles. The ride was supposed to be a nice and easy 67 miler out of Cleveland, but the morning of the ride the crew decided to reroute the whole thing to provide us with the safest route to out of the city. This was a little hectic as the crew had to repaint all the turns at the last second and get set up with little preparation. Hats off to them as they handled this whole last minute change without any problems. The pace line I was in was forced into sweeping. No one wanted to sweep the day because we had a pretty tight rack point we had to make. Sweeping turned out to be pretty brutal because the pace line right ahead of us got three flats within the first 30 miles. We had to wait on them to change the flats so we thought there was no chance we were going to make rack time. At mile 30, the crew let us give the sweep vests to the pace line that was getting the flats which allowed us to go ahead of them and try to sprint to make the rackpoint. Our pace line didn’t stop for forty miles straight and was able to make the rack point after it was pushed back about 30 minutes. Shout out to the man, the myth Phil Piasecki as everyone said we wouldn’t make rack time but he pushed us all the way there and we made it. Sprinting and making the rack point turned out to be well worth it because when we got to lodging we had barbecue waiting for us for lunch. We were also welcomed by individuals with disabilities who were ready for a dance party shortly after. The team and the individuals made some great connections right away and it turned out to be a really great dance and pizza party. We even got the DJ to join in on the dancing later on. After all this, we played some basketball in the gym and called it a day.
-Bridger Tenney, Eta Chi, TCU