The girls of Team Portland: under-21s

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 under-21 girls!

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Jen Macko

Age: 20

Hometown: Maryland

4K Page

Jen! Just thinking about her makes me happy. Jen was voted Best Attitude and Most Smiley, which is totally accurate. She was always in a super bubbly mood and brightened everyone's days just by being herself. She likes to think out loud which I think is really funny. She can also be a bit of a space cadet sometimes (don't worry she agrees), which we always found funny, but in all reality yes she is smart. And also one of the fastest girls on the team! Go Jen!

Jen can be found doing goofy things almost all the time; she's never afraid of getting dirty and I thought it was funny how she just laid down anywhere on any surface to rest. She could also be found making frequent bathroom breaks on the side of the road because is very health-conscious (she shares my obsession with fruit) and she drinks a ton of water. Or, you might find her hiding inside a rock in Arches National Park:

She always has a really cute face when she is caught doing something silly:

Jen being silly even after she fell

This puddle was from the rain but Jen looked down and said "Am I leaking?"

And she goes to College Park so I get to see her and go on more bike rides with her! Yay! Here's us attempting to spell out UMD in Moab:

Also, props to Jen for being the team's on-the-road photographer and posting lots of artsy pictures of us on Instagram. (You can check them out on the team Instagram account, @4KPortland, or on her personal account @guhjen)

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Angelica Scanu

Age: 19

Hometown: Golden, CO

4K Page

Angelica fell more than anyone else on the team... unfortunately, before the trip, her bike was stolen, and she couldn't get a new one until the day before we left Baltimore. Not only that but she had to get a guys bike instead of a girls, because that's all the 4K had left. That meant she was not comfortable on her bike at first, and it took her a while to get the hang of the clip-in pedals. 

Falls were common when she was getting on and off her bike, and poor Angelica had recurring scrapes on all her joints for most of the summer. She also took two bad falls at 20 mph that sent her to the ER for X-rays. The second one gave her a concussion and she wasn't able to ride the last 5 days of the ride. 

Aside from her susceptibility to falls, Angelica really persevered and improved so much over the course of the ride. I give her major props for riding a guys bike, because the guys bikes lack the third ring of gears that the girls have that makes it easier to pedal up hills. She struggled with the hills at the beginning, but she started getting this determination to get up them. You could see it in her face and her stance when she passed you. By the end of the trip she was pushing her group's pace and keeping up with the faster guys a lot of the time. I think everyone was really impressed with her.

Angelica and I shared a special connection: our Italian heritage. We frequently bonded over our love of tomatoes and by speaking Italian to each other and confusing the rest of the team. Here's a relevant photo of Angelica cutting tomatoes:

One of my favorite memories with Angelica was when we stayed at her house and her parents cooked us a ton of awesome food (read: Italian!!!) and threw us a fun party. Angelica's friends and neighbors were awesome and very welcoming. Here's Angelica with her family at their house:

And here's the two of us imitating this stuffed fox in the hunting lodge in Arapahoe:

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Gina Eichert

Age: 20

Hometown: Towson, MD

4K Page

Gina - usually our first thought about her is her height :) She's tiny at 4'11". I thought my bike was small until I saw hers. I asked her if they had to go into the kids' bikes for her. Her bike was too small to have a second water bottle cage, which is why she has that water bottle sticking out under her seat. Actually that water bottle tried to kill me several times when I was biking behind her in Hells Canyon and it launched itself right in front of my tire -- not once but twice. I somehow managed to dodge it once and run it over the second time without crashing, but that water bottle was definitely out to get me.

Gina may be small but that's no indication of her personality. She's really outgoing and loooves to talk. Obviously she gets that from her Italian side, which we had in common. She also comes from a background of being a serious triathlete (she started the Triathlon club at Towson!) and was definitely a strong cyclist coming into the ride. She had some persistent knee issues throughout the ride but she was usually at the point of tears before she could be convinced to get off her bike. She is very perseverant. 

Riding in Gina's group typically meant mandatory talking the whole time, required stops to pet any and all horses, and a lot of fun. I rode with her on one of the centuries and it went by crazy fast because we had such a good time.

She may be small but she's full of energy. Here she is obviously actively engaged in a water gun 
fight..  and running on the wrong side of the road? 

Gina and I at Party City, getting ready for the 4th of July

Finally, Gina was also the team barber and personal hair stylist. She used Jared's clippers to cut all the guys' hair whenever they wanted, and gave Dave and Maroun mohawks. For the girls, she straightened anyone's hair when they wanted with her mini straightener. She even dyed Dave's mohawk blue: 

Also, the entire team is sure that Jared and Gina are going to get married. As a couple they were nicknamed The Princess and The Pea.

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Chelsea Robinson

Age: 20

Hometown: Frederick, MD

4K Page

I talked about this at the very beginning of my blog but not everyone was reading my blog at that point, so I'll recap: Chelsea's one of my roommates at UMD, and this year will be our third year living together. 

Us with our other roommates in our apartment

Our roommates even came to see us off on Send-Off day :)

We both have a similar love for activity and adventurous spirit. Basically this is what went down one day:

Me: "So Chelsea, I'm thinking of doing this crazy thing this summer: biking across the country."

Chelsea: "Oh wow, really? Hmm, you know, I don't really have any plans for this summer. That sounds cool. Mind if I join?"

And that's how Chelsea and I ended up on 4K Portland. Chelsea's mom has been going through treatment for breast cancer so the cause was definitely important to her. It definitely helped to have someone to train with, and we went into the ride knowing we at least had one friend.

Chelsea is very determined and hard-working in everything she does. She's a total Type A, super organized and clean (I know this because I live with her), and very smart and studious. She's known she wants to be a doctor for years, and has already gotten into medical school and will be going to George Washington Med School next year. Right now she works as a scribe at Shady Grove Hospital and works long, stressful hours there, including overnights, on top of her tough school schedule where she still earns top grades. At first she had some doubts and worries about whether she could really bike across the country, but I was never concerned. I knew she would put the same dedication into this bike trip just like she does everything else. And she did!

We made it!!!

On the ride, Chelsea was a leg leader with me, so we worked together a lot to find hosts, food, and showers to make sure riders were happy. We also helped fill in a lot of gaps on the other two legs and together with the other leg leaders we managed to make sure we never went a single day without showers! Luxury living!! Yay us!

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Meredith Willson

Age: 20

Hometown: Annapolis, MD

4K Page

Decked out for the 4th: Her shirt says 'Pure Country'

Mere-bear!! I called her Mere-bear, but I was one of the only ones that did so I guess it wasn't really a nickname. Anyway, Meredith is one of the nicest girls I've ever met. She is smart, caring, thoughtful, and funny. When you're out on the road every day and it's hot/humid/raining/hilly/you got a flat/you name it, it's easy to complain. But Meredith never complained. She was a total trooper, and she's most commonly seen laughing at something.

Meredith also goes to UMD and I did meet her before the ride, when she organized the 4K/UMD Tri club training ride to Annapolis. I was pretty intimidated by her at first because I knew she was on the Tri team and was an awesome athlete. But Meredith was totally nice, EVEN when Chelsea and I managed to get three flats on that training ride. 

When we finally made it to Annapolis

On the 4K, I liked when Meredith was in the water van because she went overboard cheering on riders, by frantically jumping up and down in the middle of the road when riders were still a half mile away, and by wearing outfits such as this:

Meredith, that's not how it goes...

Meredith also did a lot of work as a leg leader for the third portion of the trip with Gina. We wouldn't have gotten to Portland without her! She was also among the crazy half of the team that went swimming in the Pacific when we got there (it was freezing)

Meredith and Zach after their polar dip in the water

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Julie Ansorge

Nickname: Gucci

Age: 18

Hometown: Towson, MD
4K Page

Gucci!!! Julie was the baby of the team. She's actually 19 now but she was still 18 at the end of the trip. On Day 1 Julie says she had barely trained for the ride, was terrified and was sure she couldn't do it. She was supposed to do this trip with her friend, but her friend backed out only a few days before the trip. 

Day 1 wasn't easy for anyone, with 72 miles, rolling hills and a tough climb at the end, and Julie says there were multiple times where she was near tears and really close to getting off her bike and calling her mom to come pick her up. It took her a really long time to get up that last hill, but Meredith stayed with her every step of the way. Finally they made it. Completing Day 1 was a major milestone... and Julie held off on calling her mom.

The rest of the week was still a struggle for her and there were still points where she wanted to give up. But everyone was pushing for her and we knew she could do it. With a lot of encouragement and her own willpower, she made it through the Appalachians and onward. 

As the weeks progressed, Julie became a stronger and stronger rider and was super fast by the end! Not only that but she also came out of her very shy shell and once she warmed up to us her true personality came out.

Casual nap on a banister (4K OK)

Turns out her true personality is very outgoing, goofy, and involves a ton of jokes. That we loved. Every day Julie's mom texted her a joke, and every day she would share it with the team. Most of the time the jokes were terribly corny, but the way Julie told them, cracking up practically with tears in her eyes, made them hilarious. We all miss Julie's jokes a lot.

Julie and I in Yellowstone. Check out her tan lines!!!

Now for her nickname... ok I'm actually not entirely sure where it came from, but I think it was because she would say "That's Gucci" in place of "That's good" or "that's cool" or something similar. Then people just started calling her Gucci! (4K people please correct me if I'm wrong...) What's funny is that when we met Bike & Build in Idaho we found out that someone on their team was nicknamed Gucci as well. How strange is that? Except their Gucci was a guy.

In keeping with her status as the baby of the team, Gucci's spelling skills left a little something to be desired ;) And she would sometimes be heard whining "I'm booooooored" if you weren't entertaining her to her standards. But she would entertain us when she was in the water van - she won Best Water Van Passenger because whenever you saw Julie's smiling face in the water van window it was just impossible not to be happy.

The girls of Team Portland: over-21s

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

4K Page

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!

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Becky Mastin

Age: 25

Hometown: Philadelphia, PA

4K Page

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...

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!

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Rowen Jin

Age: 23

Hometown: San Fran

4K Page

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

4K Page

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. 

Kiera and I exploring the abandoned tunnel on Day 2 

Before she graduated from UMD, Kiera was the concerts director of Student Entertainment Events (SEE) at the university. That's a really big job because the concerts SEE puts on are huge, with big-name artists and thousands of students in attendance. I can attest to that since I've been to many of her events! Kiera was always the first one to want to go explore the culture of whatever city we were in.


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Joanna Freeman

Age: 23

Hometown: Baltimore, MD

4K Page

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.

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

4K Page

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.

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."