Sleeping in until 7:45 felt so good, especially in a real bed. Our morning friendship visit was with Boseman Interprises. They are an organization that serves people with visual impairment. They have a lot of services to assist people live independently. They have a full apartment in the building to help teach people how to cook, clean, use the bathroom, shower, make the bed, everything essential. To someone with full vision these are mundane but adjusting to doing these things visually impaired requires some different skills and tricks. They also have a small woods shop to get people used to working with tools, when they showed us this there was a lady working on a basket who said the coolest thing she learned was how to take apart and fix a faucet. On the tour we also go to go around a quarter mile path they built around the building that simulates a sidewalk with obstacles like cracks, bumps, different surfaces, steps, and ramps. We took turns walking sections with a blindfold to see what it was like, it was a very strange feeling. They also have a medical glove packing and distribution center as part if their facility. I believe they said that this business employees more than 90% people with visual impairment from packing to picking off the warehouse shelves and handling orders using computers, they can do it all. This is part if their effort to get more people with visual impairment employed, the current unemployment rate is 70% for them. They also have a division of career service specialists that help set up interviews and talk with employers about hiring one of their clients and they have had a lot of success in the last month with 5 job placements in one month. Boseman themselves employs more people with a visual impairment than not from what we saw. The two hosts, and everyone except two people we met there had a visual impairment. It was really amazing for me, I have had very little experience with people who have a visual impairment so I learned so much more about the tools they use and the abilities they have.
We had just a short amount of down time between Boseman and our next friendship visit with Noble of Indiana so we took a break at lodging then headed out. Noble of Indiana is very similar to many organizations we visit, they focus on both care and assisting people with disabilities become independent and find jobs. We ate lunch with just a few clients from different groups that they have there before splitting up into a bunch of different activities. I ate with a lady, Tracy, who was so nice and we talked a little at lunch and then when we all split up I ended up in the same place as her. They have a garden behind the parking lot where they grow fruits and vegetables that they use for cooking classes and donate the rest to a food bank down the road. Tracy and I walked over there together and wondered around and looked at all the plants they are growing. While we were there I had a very scary moment with Tracy, we were walking around the corner of a planter box and I wasn't told exactly why but Tracy fainted or stumbled and started to fall over towards the planter, I noticed her falling and tried to grab her to keep her up but ended up just slowing her fall, I helped her back up to standing before some staff members came running over. I walked her over to a bench and we sat and talked for almost the rest of the friendship visit. She ended up sharing a lot with me and opening up about her life, it was so incredible. Towards the end I found out she loved music and is singing at her aunts wedding so we walked over to the karaoke room and sang the rest of the time. She will definitely be one of the most memorable people that I have met. Before we left she told me to be safe and careful on the bike and wished me a good rest of the trip.
We had some time after our friendship visit with Noble so we got a very cool opportunity. Dean invited us to come ride the velodrome and we had a few hours before dinner so we changed and biked down the street to meet him. He did a bunch of laps slowly around with us in a big double pace line just to get a feel for the track then we did individual hot laps, just a single lap as fast as we could go. I did a lap in 24.6 seconds which was 4th fastest on the team, first was 23.8 by Cam. It was so fun to ride the track.
Dinner was at a sponsor's house who is the family of a Pi Alpha from Purdue who rode a couple years ago with giys from my chapter Dylan Luther and Steven Ems. They had a bunch of grilled chicken for us, let us play in the pool and hang out. They had a photo album from their sons JOH and the first page had the team pic from the kickoff with The Arc of King County and my parents and I were in it, I thought that was so cool, I had to point it out to a few people.
We didn't have much else to do for the night but some of the cyclists wanted to get a jump on things for the morning so we took the vans to fill up the tanks. We pulled into the gas station, it was Evan and Scott in one and David and I in the other two. I got out and walked over to Evan to gwt the credit card and as I'm walking over he realizes he just locked the keys in the van. He had his wallet and has AAA so he used my phone to call and we just filled the tanks and sat around at the gas station for a while talking and waiting for AAA to show up. It was fun just hanging out, I wanted to fill the tanks fast and try to make it back to the track to watch a race but hanging out with those guys was way more fun.
Tomorrow is a century day, 110 miles to Cincinnati and our crew chief Zack is doing a ride along because he is from Cincinnati. He did GUF, rows and had one if the top 3 times on the track so despite the long ride and that we will probably have a tough rack point I think he will make it.
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