Wanted to give everyone an idea of the people I've spent the last 70 days with: my 4K family. All are incredible people, and I am honored to know them. They are going to go out and change the world. So I thought I'd share a few blurbs about each person's personality, their role on the team, memories I have with them, etc. I think it will also be fun for my teammates and me to come back to later on to reminisce. If you want to read about each rider's personal connection to cancer and their reasons for doing the ride, click on their 4K page link. Turned out I had so much to say that I had to split the team up into 4 posts.. so here are the over-21 girls!
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Ashley Blossom
Age: 24
Hometown: Buffalo NY
Ashley! She's a former cheerleader and probably wins the award for most attitude on the team. She's very funny and has a dry sense of humor with a lot of sarcasm... she always tells it like it is. She can see right through a lot of people and was voted Most Street Smarts. This is her face when she's imitating someone:
Ashley and I stuck together, especially at the beginning of the trip when we were concerned about how we were going to survive without our hair straighteners. Ashley made room in her duffel for her baby blanket and I made room in mine for fuzzy slippers. We thought WE were the princesses until we met Jared.
She suffered a major setback on Day 6 when she broke her hand falling on a bridge. She was told not to ride her bike again for 8 weeks -- the entire remainder of the trip -- and faced the tough decision of whether to leave the ride. Much to everyone's relief, she decided to stay, and was a permanent van driver for 3 weeks as soon as she was off of Vicodin. She drove the water van because she couldn't lift duffels or drive the food van with her broken hand. She was a total trooper though, and didn't want to let anyone do anything for her. She only needed help for a few days before she quickly learned how to shower, wash her hair, and even roll up her sleeping bag and sleeping pad into their stuff sacks.. that's a hard task even with two hands!!!
Her initial cast, which she got in the ER in the middle of nowhere, PA, was a really old fashioned looking plaster of paris cast which was bulky, heavy, and contained her pinky and ring finger. This photo describes Ashley's feelings about it:
She had everyone sign it. The awkward 3-finger wave she would give riders out the van window became a common salute among the team, and also made it into our team cheer.
All the time Ashley had to spend in the water van made her a Water Van Extraordinaire. She totally mastered the art of timing water stops correctly, communicating with riders while they're riding, chalking perfectly (left-handed I might add), and getting riders to eat the food that was needed to be eaten. When she got back on her bike, we were lost without her. Literally, because she had gotten so good at chalking that people stopped getting lost, but the new water van drivers didn't have her chalking skills. No one ever quite lived up to the top notch standards she set while in the water van.
Somewhere in Ohio, Ashley went back to the doctor and got a new cast which was more like a brace - removable and much less bulky. They still told her to stay off the bike for 8 weeks. Of course Ashley didn't take no for an answer. As long as she didn't fall, she'd be ok; her hand wouldn't heal as quickly, but she decided it was worth the risk. So in Indiana she got on her bike in a parking lot and rode around successfully a few times. Her smiles were priceless :)
Our first day in Iowa was her first day back on the road. She bravely rode for the same person she rode for the day she fell.
After that she rode more and more each day, getting off her bike if her hand hurt or if there was bumpy pavement. She never really put weight on it though, and I'm completely impressed that she made it the rest of the way across the country on one hand. Our bikes are so light that they're really difficult to control with one hand!!
Spotlight to Ashley for always being thoughtful, especially on my birthday when she made all the arrangements to make it a really special day.
Also, Ashley, like many of my teammates, rode for my mom one day, and she even wrote her name on her calves - my mom loved this picture:
And I can't forget to mention Ashley and Kiera's shared obsession with Starbucks!
Becky Mastin
Age: 25
Hometown: Philadelphia, PA
Becky! This girl probably ties Ashley for most attitude and most sassy comments. But she's also super fun-loving. She was always the instigator of dance parties and local nightlife exploration, and was usually the life of the party. I think this picture sums up her personality...
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She also has a really good puppy dog sad face.. which reminds me, this is my favorite picture of the two of us, from Day 4 when everything was going wrong. We were lost, cold, wet, hungry, and taking shelter against a garage in the ghetto of Pittsburgh...
And here's where she must've been annoyed with something that just happened:
So yeah, we all enjoyed her very transparent facial expressions. I remember a couple days when she had like six flats in the same day and we'd see her group come in and she'd have a grumpy-happy face on. Only Becky could make that face possible.
I always liked riding with Becky because she liked to sing, dance, explore, etc while riding and she always made it fun. We were also about the same pace so that always helps. Gimme that Becky!
Rowen Jin
Age: 23
Hometown: San Fran
Rowen was our only West Coast girl. Being from San Francisco, where they have ridiculously steep hills, Rowen crushed everyone on the hills and mountains. She was an awesome climber. She got mad whenever someone suggested that her climbing skills were due to her very light weight. Rowen claimed she was over 100 lbs but we were never quite sure. She was over 21 but didn't drive on the trip because apparently she didn't do so well at van training back in Baltimore.
Rowen took a really bad fall on Day 1 when she lost control of her bike going down a hill. She suffered a concussion and really severe road rash, and spent several weeks recovering at a 4K staff member's house in Baltimore. Spotlight to Rowen for rejoining the ride when she could. I don't know if I would've done that if I were her.
Anyway, Rowen's fall really freaked everyone out on Day 1, especially because she was a pretty experienced cyclist. I think we all rode more cautiously after that, so at least some good came out of it. Rowen rejoined us in Ohio, was a van passenger for 2 more weeks, and then got back on her bike around the same time Ashley did. She was still nursing her road rash with ointment and sunscreen through the end of the ride to make sure they won't scar too badly. But she never had any more falls.
There's more to Rowen than meets the eye - she's very smart, going to medical school this fall, and has been all over the world doing various service projects in the last few years. She's very independent and liked to try to ride by herself sometimes, until people told her she wasn't allowed to. She also has a really contagious laugh and sometimes bursts out laughing at things that aren't even funny, then somehow manages to get everyone else laughing as well.
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Kiera Zitelman
Age: 22
Hometown: Maryland
Hometown: Maryland
Kiera is a very goal-focused athlete who usually liked to ride fast and get to the host to relax. She's very cultured and I would always see her reading. She really likes rap music, particularly Kanye, and it was always a treat whenever she was in the vans and we got to listen to her music at the water stops.
Kiera was also one of our three vegetarians. She was worried that she would never get any food so she brought like a million Clif bars in her duffel. That led to her bag being the heaviest and everyone always groaning when they had to pack/unpack her bag. (Don't worry, mine was like the third heaviest and people always complained about my bag too.)
The vegetarians fared pretty well with food on the trip. They had to be careful to eat enough protein, mostly from beans and peanut butter. 95% of the places we got food donations from were very accommodating when we told them we had a few vegetarians, as were all of our hosts that fed us dinner. There were a couple places we went to (small towns in the Midwest) where vegetarianism is a totally foreign concept, but these were also the towns very familiar with the 4K so they are used to feeding vegetarians ("veggies" as we call them for short) when the 4K comes through.
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| Kiera and I exploring the abandoned tunnel on Day 2 |
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Joanna Freeman
Age: 23
Hometown: Baltimore, MD
Joanna!! She was one of my best friends on the ride. I was intimidated by her at the beginning because she seemed SUPER prepared for the ride, way more than I was. But I quickly realized she's an extremely kind, thoughtful, caring and generous person and definitely someone I wanted to hang around with.
Joanna was voted Team Mom (not to be confused with Teen Mom..) because of how she always stepped up to take care of the team. Whether it was cooking, doing and folding laundry, or driving to Wal Mart to pick up someone's prescription, for some reason it was always Joanna. And it genuinely made her happy to help people like that. Since what we were all doing was giving up our summers to help people, I feel like Joanna had the true spirit of the 4K. She was also the most dedicated blogger and the top fundraiser on our team, raising close to $13,000 for the Ulman Cancer Fund.
Along with all of her good qualities, Joanna was also there for me when my mom was diagnosed with cancer on the ride. Her own mother has been battling breast cancer for several years now, so she knew the feeling, and Joanna received bad news of her own while she was on the ride too. She was physically there when I found out and made me feel much better at the time, then paid extra attention to me for the rest of the trip and made sure I was doing ok. And I'm glad she lives in Baltimore because we'll be able to see each other often!
Joanna was also the one I think I rode with the most out of the whole team. We were pretty much exactly the same pace, and our riding styles just matched up completely. She was the team's voice of reason when someone was trying to do something stupid, but at the same time had a great sense of humor and was always up for an adventure. We even rode by ourselves in a group of two once or twice so that no one else would bother us and throw off our rhythm. There was the time we rode 121 miles in the desert together just the two of us, and miraculously didn't even hate each other by the end.
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| Awesome photo after it rained on her bike when it was laying down like that! |
She was very loyal and dedicated to her boyfriend Kevin, who did the 4K last year, and always made time for their 20-minute daily Skype dates. Coupled with her mature personality, this prompted us to bug her all the time asking when the wedding is, and preemptively plan a 4K reunion at her wedding :P Love you Joanna!
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Sarah Robbins
Nickname: Swervy Sarah, Reckless Robbins
Age: 21
Hometown: Catonsville, MD
I should probably explain her unique nickname before I say anything else about her... well, Sarah is not always the most *aware* rider on the road. She is known for swerving back and forth unexpectedly. She can't talk to someone without turning her head to look at them, and she can't do that without her bike suddenly drifting in that direction. Oh and she likes to talk. So basically that leaves a combination where she frequently swerves, and there you have her nicknames!
Other than Sarah's interesting riding behavior, she's ALWAYS smiling and basically never in a bad mood. She was truly a ray of sunshine and always made me laugh. She also ends up being the life of the party sometimes. Sarah goes to UMD with me and is also a rising senior, but I didn't know her before the trip! Looking forward to hanging out with her at school.
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| Sarah and I while setting up a lunch stop for riders in Glenwood Canyon |
The other thing I must note about Sarah is that we somehow were always riding together on the days with the prettiest views! We became used to freaking out about beautiful views together.
Towards the end of the trip, we noticed the size of Sarah's hands. They are TINY. I mean so tiny they look like children's hands. From that point on Sarah's hands were the topic of many jokes. I wish we had noticed them earlier so we could have poked more fun at them :) After Sarah got home after the trip she texted all of us saying "I am with other tiny-handed people. I am home."
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