Hopkins 4K for Cancer

June 23, 2005

Fairbury, NE
After leaving the town of Frankfort, KS and our hosts at the Annunciation Catholic Church, we left for the state of Nebraska. In Kansas, we encountered relatively strong eastwardly blowing headwinds that made the ride much more difficult than it would have been otherwise. For the most part, the ride itself was uneventful. Many of us were frustrated by headwinds which greatly slowed down our progress. Luckily, Sandra was able to get some good lunch donations to help us all get through the tough day. Making the day even more interesting was the fact that one of our water tanks that we use for water breaks was stolen at the Kansas-Nebraska border when we left it unattended for literally 5 minutes. Oops.

However, upon turning north, we were actually pleasantly surprised by a strong tailwind northward into Nebraska making the last ~20 miles much easier to manage. Upon arriving in Fairbury and spending a few minutes in a local garage sale, we arrived at the Grace Lutheran Church and were greeted by Rachel and Jake at the door. We all showered at the very nice facilities at a local recreation center and were greeted by an amazing potluck held a Grace that helped us to recover from the 73+ mile day. The church and all its members were very generous to us all, and we thank them for all their warmth generosity. It made the difficult day much easier to swallow.

After dinner and a period of relaxation, we had another one of our 4K pow-wows where we shared as much or as little about why we decided to ride the 4K in the first place. It was a very moving night for all of us hearing about everyone’s motivations for making the trip. At the same time, it helped all of us reaffirm our own motivations through the sharing of our stories. To cap off the night, we all took small white or black letters to put on our bikes, if we so chose, to help remind us all who we were riding for. All in all, it was a very good day.

-Mark Lin