Hopkins 4K for Cancer

June 25, 2004

Franklin, NE
The folks at Fairbury served up a great breakfast so I knew already it would be a good day. We had some headwindy hot weather on our short ride today, so we came in all sweaty to Superior. Luckily, they had a pool all ready for us in town. Then we made the discovery of the trip so far, even more precious than the Elvis Lives Museum near St. Louie: the First Presbyterian Church happens to have the most squishy plush shag carpeting west of the Mississippi. Immediately, there was a general scramble a-la-WWF to claim space on it. This trip does funny things to you. I find myself evaluating every carpet I see for its give-under-sleeping-bagsness. In a freak accident, Joe’s derailer managed to snap off on today’s ride compromising the frame of his bicycle. The implications of this are serious, as once this happens the frame is forever weakened and unridable. One thing is for sure-he can double up on my bike the whole way if that is what it takes for him to get to the promised land, S.F. One for all and all for one.

We met a kindred spirit in town, Shannon. He is a chill bike geek like us, an endangered species and the only one in all of Superior, apparently (hang strong man-we’re with you!). We immediately put him to work, of course, and I spent an awesome evening outside in the dusk with him and Patrick, talking shop, fixing bikes and eating cheezits. He rode out with us the next morning before getting a flat, calling mom and going back to his, count them, four dayjobs. We fully expect him to join us for at least a week on our route next year, got that man? I also had a great time getting a haircut in town and chatting with recently married Robin. I’m not quite sure how, but somehow by the end of the conversation, I found myself committed to living in a small Midwestern town for a year. Ahem. Guess I’ll have to follow through. Robin’s sister is surviving colon cancer, and I dedicated my ride the next day to her.

We also had an incredible supper with the community, who shared selflessly their experiences with cancer. That is special to us, as we have only one night with them, such a short time to make the kind of connection we want to and got to make that night.
Ben is the philosophy major on this trip, but I find a lot of strange things fly in and out of your mind during the SIX HOURS you are on the bike. Funny how sometimes life in a smaller town can seem more full.

- anon.

Today was an interesting day for me. Being the leg leader for this leg I knew what our upcoming host in Franklin had in store for us and I had a difficult time explaining it to the riders. Since beginning to plan out my route I was most excited about our stop in Franklin simply because our host there, Pastor Neil Kloppenborg, was simply amazing. From the moment I spoke with him I knew this would be an amazing stay, he had been so enthusiastic about cause and our group, he proclaimed back in April that the dinner for the evening was “already the talk of the town,” little did I know that he wasn’t joking.

The morning started off well, we had an amazing breakfast from our host in Superior, Pastor Mark and the First Presbyterian Church. After breakfast a few of the guys made a rather dumb mistake. There was a speed radar for cars just outside the church in efforts to slow drivers down through the area; however, these radars not only show the speeds of cars but also bikers. So a bunch of the guys and Katie took their best shots at it. I, along with several other riders tipped the scale at about 31 mph, not bad considering we didn’t warm up, but David had to show us all up hitting 32 mph. After several fruitless attempts to match his speed I gave up about ready to throw up. Shannon, a local biker who fixed all of our bikes the night before, arrived to ride out with us that morning, which was really cool. The night before he spent hours fine tuning our bikes since they hadn’t seen a shop in about a week. He also delivered the unfortunate news to Joe that his bike was indeed broken from his mishap the previous day. His frame had actually cracked, leaving his bike un-ridable. He was fortunate enough to be able to borrow others bikes until the problem could be solved.

After our moment of silence we all headed out for an easy day. The ride was just over 50 miles in length and we were fortunate enough to not be riding into a headwind. We finished the ride very quickly and most stopped by the local ice cream/shake shop in town. At about 6 we all walked to dinner together to find that there were nearly 50 community members there with still more to come. The dinner had been our biggest and probably our best yet, Pastor Neil wasn’t joking when he said it was the talk of the town. We had a great time at the dinner and all ate enough for a small army; still, we couldn’t finish all the food. After the dinner most of us played in the park, having balancing contests on the sea-saws before we headed back to the church for a great nights sleep. It was the perfect ending to an awesome day!!!

- Peter Dewey