Back on the Hill!

It's a Yackety Yack from 1910 (from the museum)!

Hey Everyone!
So, I'm back at Chapel Hill now sitting in Davis library writing up a journal with some of my friends, but I'll try to catch you up on everything that has happened since I last updated about Belhaven. We got up to leave Belhaven around 6, and Trinity United Methodist made us an absolutely amazing breakfast of pancakes, sausage, grits, yogurt, fresh fruit, breakfast cereals, and really anything you could want. After we stuffed our faces, pastor Sam reminded us of keeping a firm foundation for our "house" of life and presented Bike & Build with a check for $410.00 collected from the community! Once again, I can't tell you how awesome Belhaven is.

After about 35 miles of riding, we stopped in Washington to eat lunch by the river and just relax. After that, we set off at a brisk pace for Greenville, home of ECU. I got pretty exhausted near the end, but managed to make it. We stayed at a spare house owned by the leader of Habitat in Greeneville with this guy named Chris who was a children's pastor in the area. Two families and Texas Steakhouse donated food for dinner, and once again our coolers were overflowing with deliciousness. The day was spent just kind of relaxing, reveling in phone signal, and heading to town to pick up a few essentials.

We left Greenville around 9 yesterday morning and set out on our 80-mile ride to Wake Forest. My friend Cole and I decided it would be a great idea to add 5 miles to the start of our trek by missing a turn, but after that it was pretty smooth sailing. This ride was by far the hardest we had encountered up to this point in our trip. In addition to the strains of riding about 15 miles more than we had ever ridden before, we had been riding for 3 straight days prior to this ride, and we encountered hills for the first time, which make riding a great deal more difficult. We pulled into North Wake Church around 3:45, completely exhausted. Fortunately, we met with a ton of Southeastern students and church staff who gave us Gatorade, energy bars, and massages. I also found out that the pastor of the church, Rob Craig, went to high school with my mom and uncle and had been to my grandmom's house before. What a small world! We hung out with all of those people until after dinner, when we headed to the local go-kart track because we hadn't had enough wheels for one day. After some intense racing, we stopped by goodberry's for a few concretes before heading to bed for the night.

This morning, we headed out from North Wake, once again extremely grateful for all that had been provided for us, and rode towards Durham. After riding through town, we cut down towards Chapel Hill. The ride was difficult, even though it was only 38 miles, because everyone was pretty tired from days of riding for the first time. Fortunately, the ride wasn't too difficult, except when I rode behind Ben for the first ten miles, so I made it here without too many problems. I was so excited to be back at Chapel Hill that I was going to do whatever it took to get here. We walked down to shower in Fetzer Gym, stopping to take photos at the old well and get strange looks from everyone in Student Stores as we walked through in our spandex. This afternoon we have been resting up and trying to relax since we're here building for the next two days before our 80ish mile ride to Winston-Salem and then riding up to the mountains! I hope everyone is doing well and having a great summer!