Thursday, March 31, 2011

T-Minus 40 Days

Forty days left until my flight to Oregon. This is getting closer and closer. It seems like just a couple days ago when Fletch and I were in a kitchen in the mountains, standing at the pancake station, talking about doing this trip. Well dang, here it is. Coming super fast. I have been doing 20 milers with relative ease, along with a few runs in there every now and then. I am slowly getting into shape. On a downside, I have been coughing large amounts of mucus on a regular hourly basis and my coughing sounds like a fog horn. On an upside, we just go new Young Life leaders on our team last night. Which is great, but I didn't get to bed until 1 last night. That really messes up someone who has been going to bed at 11 on the dot for a whole semester. But I'm pumped to have them now. God is going to do big things through them at Daniel High School. I can already tell. And Greg Stephens, our new guy leader, is pretty good at Smash Brothers 64. That is the best part.


I am heading home this weekend to get some new gear. Actually a lot of gear. I have to redo a lot of stuff on my bike. (I also decided to ride clipless, Fletcher, if you read this. You convinced me.) Wes Emery also is donating a Go Pro HD camera to our trip. I like that kid a lot. He is awesome. I can't wait for y'all to see my crazy antics in video, instead of just reading about them. Speaking of which, anyone that wants to donate an SD memory card for my trip, (you will get it back), please let me know. It would be huge HUGE help.

With love, and other mixed emotions.
dkal


Sunday, March 27, 2011

Pain.. Yucky.

Well, I just got back from a mission trip in Washington, DC. Pretty incredible. We got to love people well and do a ton of good work for the city. The only downside to the trip was the repercussions of being a van driver. As a van driver, you get less sleep. I also did not drink a lot of water in order to reduce the amount of pee breaks that were necessary. I also only got to go on one run during DC.

Why am I telling you this?

Fletcher told me after we got back that he was doing his first 50 miler this weekend for training. I said to myself, I said, "Daniel, you have to do a 50 miler as well." I don't know what logical thought was going through my head that made me want to do that after the scenario I just described above. But I did. So I looked up a 56 mile route that went up to table rock, packed my gear, and rode. It was a beautiful day, so I shed my sweatshirt and was rolling in my tank top. Took a couple wrong turns. I had to ask a cop for directions. Anyways. Four hours pass, and I still wasn't to the halfway-turn around point of the loop I was doing. I thought, "Daniel, where are you?". I kept riding and ten minutes later or so I get crazy muscle cramps in my quads. I'm talking about the "I can't walk, and it hurts to sit" muscle cramps. Not a good situation when you are 4 hours of bike riding away from where you live. Oh, and I didn't have cell service in the mountains. Crap. Found a gas station. I bought and chugged a carton of delicious Orange Juice, and started pounding waters down. My cramps went away after a short nap. I got on my bike, 10 minutes later RE-CRAMPED. Not a good situation. I had cell service at this point, so I called a lot of friends. All of them too busy to come pick me up, even though I made it specifically clear that I was stranded at Table Rock. Ashley Williams, (an angel I might add), found it in the goodness of her heart to come get me an hour away. I took a nap while waiting for her. I now have an unbelievably painful and bright sunburn in the beautiful shape of a tank top across my back. Yippeee. not.

I checked my route, I ended up biking about 44 miles. If I had finished the loop, I would have done around 76.

Morals of the story.
1.) Drink water.
2.) Drink more water than that.
3.) Go left on Meece Mill Rd. instead of Right.

I am an idiot.