July 18, 2010
Denny cooking breakfast for all of us at 5am.
Yes, the butt butter came into play that day.
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| Still can’t believe that they let a 3 person sideways bike into the STP, these guys decided right in front us to not only ride in the middle of the road but to turn around right there. I’m sure you can imagine what can out of my mouth. It wasn’t pretty. This day was a lot harder because I was so tired and we still had 98 miles to go. By this point I was asking myself… who the hell thought of us doing this and I’m never going to make it.  |
This is at the bottom of the Longview bridge. They would line us up and a motorcycle rider would escort us over the bridge. We started out in the front of the line and I just kept yelling to ppl
“I’m sorry I’m slow, just go around me”.
I would just put my head down and start singing my song in my head “this is the song that never ends it goes on and on my friend, some ppl started singing it not knowing what it was and they’ll continue
singing it forever just because” well you know the rest….
It takes my mind off how big a hill is.
There was one girl that started out behind me and she stayed behind me over the whole bridge. I was really shakey the whole day and so I was going really SLOW on the down hill part.
Pam started freaking out because she and Paul were over the bridge and I
wasn’t, with the cars already coming over. So yes, she had to get pics of that.
If you look close enough that is me in the yellow.
Then the ride was kind of flat and uneventful. It went thru the town that I lived in for a couple of years Scappoose OR.
(It turns out that Denny and I both lived there the same time but didn’t know it, I was in 3rd grade)
It was when we got 10 miles away from the finish line that the whole ride started to really get to me.
First of all I thought we would never see the finish line and second of all I was getting so tired that I was starting to get pissed off with every stoke I made with my feet.
We got right under the St Johns Bridge and I had to stop and tell Pam and Paul that if I don’t take a brake I’m going to have a mental breakdown. I just stood there and was fighting back the tears. I was just so tired and ready for this to be over that I could not go anymore.
So we rested for awhile and with great words of encouragement from Pam & Paul we started up again.
Before this I had already taken the picture of my dad that I always carried with me and put it into my shirt right next to my heart.
We had to go across a steel bridge and then up and around lots of roads in Portland. I thought it was never going to end.
We came up one hill and I knew we were getting close because by a light pole was my cousin Craig. I yelled out “we have to be almost there… because there is Craig”
At that time I took my dad’s picture out of my shirt and put it in my left hand.
As we got closer to the finish line Pam just kept telling me that “you started this whole thing you’re going to be the first of us across the finish line.
I will let the picture tell the rest…
We had tons of ppl there waiting at the finish line for us to cross
This picture is really special to me because this is my mom and my dad’s brother Gail who came to see me cross the finish line. It was almost like having both my parent's there.
Renee finishing
Yes Craig and Jerry had finished almost 2 hrs before us.
This is when we saw that the girls had made shirts with our picture on it
and all of our names and numbers.
That was so special. Pam and I each got to keep one.
I can’t believe I did it, and got so many other people to do it with me.
I’m so glad that I decided to do this in my dad’s honor. It has now changed my life. This is just the first of many things that I will be pushing myself to do.
Thanks to everyone who has supported me on this journey.
Love you all……
Now on to the next thing.. More to come...
