Day 54-Terre Haute to Bloomington IN

We started off our morning especially early, waking up at 4:30 because we had a sponsored breakfast but it was absolutely waking up early for. We left lodging at 5 and biked just over a mile to breakfast on the other side of campus to eat at Cackleberries Café. It was an awesome breakfast, eggs and bacon with hash browns and toast, perfect way to start the morning. By the time we finished up the sun was out and we were ready to hit the road for a 60 mile day. The ride was really nice, through more farms and flat roads for a while, we also rode through more sections that were like a tunnel of trees which looks so cool. At one crew stop two guys, Cam and Jake, tried the banana and sprite challenge which we have been talking about for a while. Supposedly if you eat a banana and chug a bunch of sprite right after it will make you throw up so they tested it for us and ate two bananas and split a 2 liter of sprite. I got the whole thing on video but no one threw up, it was very anti-climactic, they just burped a lot and felt really uneasy for a while. The rack time was pretty tough so unfortunately only the front pace line made it to stage up for arrival and the rest had to get racked in. Arrival was a lot of fun though because everyone got to be on the bikes and do a full double pace line into our friendship visit with Stone Belt which is under The Arc umbrella. As soon as we rode up I knew it was going to be fun, they didn’t give us more than a few seconds after we lined up before they rushed over to us to meet us and find out who we were and where we were from. When we were standing outside I met a guy, Bryan who was telling me about his mountain bike. I sat with him during lunch outside at a table with Tim and we talked bikes for a while. He loves his mountain bike and takes it out on trails a lot but recently he found an old Schwinn 10 speed steel frame bike in his neighbor’s garage that he gave to Bryan. It is in pretty bad shape but the frame is still good and handlebars so Bryan wants to fix it up and get it back on the road, maybe even make it into a 20 speed if he can. There is a bike co-op in town that will help him do the work and find the parts. I hope that it works out for him, it sounds like an awesome project and sweet bike. After lunch we played bingo and danced while some people got their face painted then they gave us all little bags with some treats and a shirt. The shirts were from a series of monologues they put on, the shirts say “I am you” which is the theme of the monologues, they are just like us and everyone else. It was so much fun friendship visit for everyone. 

After the visit we got back on the bikes and rode to lodging which is at the Pi Kapp chapter house here at Indiana University, the Alpha Psi chapter. They have an awesome house, they are doing renovations to the kitchen and second floor so we didn’t get to see the whole house but the outside and main floor and their chapter and party room downstairs was sweet, Pi Kapp letters, flags, awards, paddles from the founding father class in 1987 and onward were all over the walls. We were staying in their bunk room on the third floor and helped move all their new mattresses into the rooms which was fine with us because they were brand new and we had nothing to worry about. Their house mom was there to help us get settled and went out to go buy us breakfast for tomorrow morning. We all showered and hung out for a while before heading out to dinner with some guys on their alumni board. They took us to Nick’s which is a legendary place and has been around since before these alumni were even in school and it just keeps growing and taking over more and more of the building it is in. Apparently on game days the place become packed. Most of it is a bar but we went to the back room and they just let us get anything on the menu, and ordered a ton of appetizers. It was so awesome, I had the BBQ Stromboli which the alumni I sat with recommended. It was fun to hear stories from them about what their fraternity experience was. Two of them were founding fathers at this chapter and the other at my table was in the alpha class. They have a huge alumni base and have the incredible house they do and are able to do all these renovations because of alumni donations, I hope that my chapter will be able to be on the same level one day. They said one of the alumni they are close with who was a founding father as well is a self-made millionaire and lives a few blocks from Nick’s, pretty sweet, not bad to have a millionaire as an alumni. 

The evening was just hanging out at the house, we had a team meeting and found out that one of our crew, Jason actually had to leave the team for a couple days though, he found out after our friendship visit that his grandpa passed away. His relatives nearby came and picked him up and he will return to the team after the funeral and some time with his family. We all sent some love his way and already feel is absence. We were able to hook up a laptop to their TV and watched Semi-Pro and I took care of some things for my apartment next year and finally filled out the leadership surveys for guys on the team

Tomorrow is another 60 mile ride into Indianapolis followed by a day off. I am really excited because we are going to see our cycling coach from the beginning of the summer, Dean, and for dinner we are going to the Velodrome he runs to watch a race and hit up some food trucks.