Day 52 Chicago, IL to South Bend, IN I did the job of Logistics Coordinator today:)

So today was a really really early wake up. We woke up at 4:30am this morning and I am sure it was probably the earliest we had woken up in a long time. Today I was not cycling. The crew is allowed to ask the cyclists if they mind giving up a ride and more or less switching for the day. Spencer who is our Logistics Coordinator wanted to ride today and so I let him switch places with me.  So I woke up and brought all but my bike down as I wasnt riding it today and I then loaded up the truck with the Thules and once all the bikes were racked we all headed out towards Buckingham Fountain.

We stayed in Itasca the past few nights so we needed to drive to the city to head out. We arrived at the fountain and had our breakfast while we waited for John Schumacher to arrive as he was going to ride along with us today. We circled up and then the cyclists went off for a picture in front of Buckingham fountain.

I was in Truck 1 with Nick today and we headed off to scout ahead and make sure the route was right which it really wasnt from the get go. They had a re route right from the fountain.  After that Nick and I found a few construction zones that had detours and well the crew did a great job finding them and the cyclists did a great job navigating through them. 

We stopped at the Mcdonalds by the IL/IN state line grabbed a little food and then waited for the cyclists to get to the state line for pictures.  Once we had a few through we headed out ahead again. We got all the way through to lunch which was at the Indiana Dunes State park. We met with the sponsor Ian and then helped him setup lunch.  We then just hung out and waited for the cyclists to arrive. 

They all got there and had their lunch and some of them jumped in the lake for a quick swim. After a little while we all started cleaning up and the cyclists headed out on their way for the second half of their journey that day.  Nick and I finished cleaning up and then we headed out. I drove this time as Nick was so drained he probably would have fallen asleep during the drive. Not a good idea lol. So we drove the remaining part of the route which was fine except for one turn was not physically possible and part of the route was not labeled properly on the sheet. 

We arrived safely at the Saint Joseph school where we met the principal and were guided around and shown where the guys would shower, eat, and sleep. I helped get all the Thules inside and write the instructions on the board and then we hung out while we waited for the cyclists to arrive. Spencer did a great job and rode 95 miles today and considering he is crew and has only done a few small rides it was very impressive.

After they all arrived we were on a time crunch so we all hurried up and headed out to our dinner with the Knights of Columbus. It was a great spaghetti dinner and after that we did our introductions and then we headed out to get ice cream as Mrs. Schwartz was in town and she took us all out for ice cream.

After that I went home wrote 2 blogs and passed out.

Peace, Love, and Mints

White "DJ" Doug