Hopkins 4K for Cancer

July 5, 2007

by Jen Breads
Welcome Lauren! Today H4K picked up its newest member, Lauren Spangler, which brings our final count up to 27 riders. Lauren rode with the 2006 group but had to leave in Moab, Utah so today we picked her up in Montrose and are very excited to get to know her better as we continue our way out west! The ride between Paonia and Montrose was short and sweet—only 50 flat miles. Thanks to Logan’s mom we connected with Francis Smiles, a representative from an organization called Bosom Buddies, who helped us find a place to stay for the night, Francis was our angel of Montrose! She is a breast cancer survivor and motivational speaker who has helped raise over one million dollars for breast cancer awareness and research projects. She saved us from camping in a city park (with no dinner or breakfast) in 100+ degree weather. With her help we found lodging at Grace Community Church and enjoyed a catered dinner of enchiladas and lasagna. After dinner half of the team went to the movies to see Transformers and the other half spent the evening hanging out with a group of cyclists from the University of Illinois who are also making a cross-country trip (NYC to San Diego) for cancer. Dewey ran into their director at the grocery store earlier in the day and we invited them over to hang out with our team. This is their first year doing the trip and we had a great time exchanging stories with them and comparing different parts of our summers. We made plans to ride out of Montrose together in the morning and hopefully we will run into them again in the coming weeks.