Hopkins 4K for Cancer

June 24, 2002

Day 23(71 miles) Kansas City, MO to Tope
Today marked the start of a painful tradition for 24 college kids who would normally be snoozing away their summer mornings if they were at home asleep in their own beds…a 5:30am wake up! Although it was brutal and several people were spotted running into walls from early morning blindness, we all made it up and were miraculously ready to go an hour and a half later. After a short stop at a nearby Burger King for breakfast we rolled out of Kansas City and Missouri for forever.

You’ll never guess what we saw today on the road…corn! Yep, it’s true. For what seems like the 100th day straight (notice the frustrated exaggeration) we passed through cornfield after cornfield. When we were done with those we decided we wanted a change of scenery and found some meadows to ride through… filled with corn.

On a brighter note, the riders of the Hopkins 4K are happy to divulge to the general population that we are now the proud discoverers of the 8th Wonder of the World, a time warp on Kansas State Highway 24. Let me explain. While pumping our legs along this soon to be infamous highway, we read a sign that said 34 miles to Topeka. To our complete excitement we read a sign 4 miles later that told us we had only 22 miles left to our destination! Some say they saw green sparks fly, others felt that they were sucked into some kind of a black hole. In any case, we are all still a little dazed and confused, but more importantly very excited to have shaved off 8 miles of asphalt.

The essence of today, regrettably, revolves around an event that we are not as happy to recount. We have had numerous scraped elbows and several falls on bikes, but we have been lucky enough to not have any trouble with our support vans. Today we had our first taste of unavoidable events getting the better of us. To put everyone at ease, everyone is completely fine and healthy. Two of our riders, Sarah and Ashley G., were involved in an accident when a truck ran them off the road and onto the shoulder. Both came away with a few minor scrapes and bruises, however a little shocked. Our van wasn’t able to walk away as smoothly, though, and the people at Avis have brought us a new one to finish our trek with.

It’s scary to see how unpredictable life is. We are riding across the nation in hopes for a cure, in memory, and in honor of the victims of a disease that touches all of us in some way. We’ve seen how unpredictable the lives of our loved ones can be, yet today we’re reminded how unpredictable our own lives can be.

Maybe it’s reminded us that fighting is a good thing. Maybe we walked away from today’s events realizing that this trip is the best place for us, that to fight for a good cause is indeed a good fight for everyone. Certainly, our accomplishments this summer will one day be strides towards easing the pain of cancer in our own lives.

Despite this accident, we are all in good spirits and are excited at having a wonderful day off tomorrow. For the next two nights we are staying at the First United Methodist Church in Topeka. We arrived early and had time to take nice long showers at the local YMCA and come back with plenty of sun left. All us guys hung out in the sun fixing the bikes and jamming to the radio of our new van (dubbed “the Golden Egg”), while the girls were busy at the Laundromat washing our clothes (girls do laundry…guys do bike = everyone happy!). The church treated us to a wonderful dinner-among other things, soybean enchiladas made with soy beans combined, not picked, from our cook’s own farm.

And finally, one lesson of the night…Thayer has terrible taste in movies! “Saturday Night Live, Best of Phil Hartman” is not the newly released comedy or thriller we were expecting. I guess you can’t put someone from Lehigh in charge of anything.

-Ryan Hanley