Hopkins 4K for Cancer

July 21, 2005

Rachel, NV
It was still dark outside when we started out day in Panaka by dedicating the ride to Jennie’s ROTC instructor. It was still preety cool outside but we also had a 99 mile day through the desert ahead of us. Luckily for us most of the day was cloudy due to the storm from the night before. Once we climbed our first summit and went down we could see hundreds of miles ahead of us. It was amazing but at times the road was deceiving. At lunch we all took a picture in front of a sign that said Extraterrestrial Hwy. We had seen many movies and heard many myths about this place but it was nothing like what we expected. It ended up being a dirt road that split from the Hwy and went off as far as the eye could see. There were no buildings marking area 51, infact there were no buildings anywhere. Rachel, we saw as we came around a bend was a small cluster of trailers and the population is 98 humans, aliens ? (well that’s what the sign said anyways). We were supposed to camp out in the parking lot of a motel called The Ale Inn, but when we came in we were told that not only were they giving us dinner, but they were opening up all of their rooms for us so we could all have beds to sleep in. At this point in the trip we find building with air conditioning a luxury. As we were walking to dinner we got yet another surprise for the day. Jessie Parson, a rider from last year came to visit us. When we arrived there was still one group left on the road and Nisha was in that group. I didn’t know this but she is one of Nisha’s best friends. We all knew Nisha was under a lot of stress because this is her leg and she’s be working really hard every night to make sure everything goes smoothly. Jessie’s showing up would be such a good surprise and it was. We were in the dining room waiting for the group to show up and had Jessie sit at one of the side tables. When Nisha walked in she didn’t have any clue what was going on for a while and then when she finally saw Jessie she did the best double take I’ve ever seen anyone do. With all the stress of the trip, I’m glad something made her day memorable to say the least. After dinner, our host let us pick movies from this big shelf and we all settled down to watch Pearl Harbor. Ironically, as Hawaii was being bombed in the movie Dave ran in screaming about some bombs going off outside. In a matter of seconds we were all outside and sure enough we could see explosions on the horizon. I couldn’t decide if it was cool cause I’d never seen anything like it or if I should be scared because we were sleeping near area 51. In any case we finished the movie and slept in nice big beds. None of us were abucted, but we are going to Warm Springs which holds the record for the most abductions.

Dhara Amin