Pedal to the Metal Kettle

---

We arrived at Alexandria, the finish line of the bike ride, so we could drop off the van and get a ride up to the start. On the bus ride up I shared my mom-made cookies with a Minnesotan fellow, and got an interesting story in return of a man(he) who married a Vietnamese woman whose family was exiled and left home as Saigon was taken. Her father is a mad inventor who came up with the idea of suspending a giant fan 3 miles above New York in order to air condition the entire city.
I was quite pleased with the bus after some of my experiences in India, and couldn't help but smirk at the fact we did in less than 2 hours what we would be doing in 5 days, though a bit more direct. We arrived at Walker soon enough and got to the overcrowded park on Leech Lake with a notable sign, "NO CAMPING" with 500 tents sprawled around it for this occasion. The MS Society had setup well and had golf carts and such going around taking people and their luggage to places if they needed help so we were escorted to one side of the park and made camp. I was fairly tired out from my Japanese day and had no power to make it into Walker to look at all the nice restaurants. I enjoyed the sunset upon the lake, read, and went to a spaghetti dinner sponsored by the Lions at a nearby church and mooched some food. My stomach was a bit funny, but I managed to sleep restfully enough.

I awoke as usual to Roger already dressed and ready somewhere around the confines of 5:30 AM. My head spinning a bit I took sometime to realize where I was and slowly got my stuff together and biking shorts on. Once the confusing bit of taking the tents apart was finished, we had a cart come take our baggage away(better service than you'll get in any airport!). We strapped up and jumped on our bikes and were out around 6:30 or 7 I could imagine.

The first morning was misty and fairly cool, though humid as any rainforest. We started directly from Walker onto a gorgeous bike trail that twisted through some tempting lakes. During the first leg, Astred was attacked by bees, but decided it was not terrible enough to stop biking so she continued on. During the second leg we got onto a roadway, and by then the mist had dissapated leaving only heat and muggy air, and this contiunued for the whole day as we all adjusted our bottoms to 50 miles of sitting. Not all of us complied.

---