1994 Bike Trip - Day (-2)

I Fed Ex’d my bicycle to Wandering Wheels (WW) has a couple mechanics on staff, and they assemble everyone’s bike that was shipped to Seattle so everything is all set to go when you arrive.

WW is headquartered in Upland, IN. Early in the morning, my parents drove me to the airport in Rochester, NY as it was cheaper to fly out of Rochester than Syracuse. Trip participants had a couple options. One option was to fly directly to Seattle on your own. This made sense for those already on the west coast. Everyone else would fly to Indianapolis, IN as that is the closest major airport to Upland. This made sense for people on the east coast as we were able to get a “group rate” for our flight from Indianapolis to Seattle. I had flown on an airplane only a couple times before when I was a young teen, so I was pretty nervous flying on my own. I was pretty nervous about the trip in general. I flew on a turbo-prop to Cleveland, OH and then took a “big” plane from there to Indianapolis.

WW staff and other volunteers were there to pick up groups of people and shuttle us to WW headquarters in Upland. A young married couple picked me and another guy up in their personal car to shuttle us to HQ. Louis was the name of the guy I rode with. He was also from NY (I forget where exactly) and was originally from Holland. He was in his 60s. We just had some small talk in the car during the hour or so ride to HQ. I looked out the window a lot taking it all in. I was thinking to myself that the next time I would be in Upland would be a few weeks later.

HQ is kind of like a large ski lodge. I think it is typically used as an overnight retreat for Christian retreats. As I said, this is a “Christian” group. Taylor University (a Christian university) is a small local college in town. There wasn’t much else in town though. Slowly, more and more people showed up at HQ. Everyone would introduce themselves and give a quick bio. A fair number of people on the trip were Taylor University students. As I said in a previous post, there were 63 of us ranging in age from 13 to 67. I was scoping out people to see who I would ride with on my trip. I ride pretty fast. You could quickly whittle the group down to a select few who would have a riding style similar to mine.

There’s a “famous” place in town called Ivanhoe’s that many of us ate dinner at. They’re famous for their 100 different types of milkshakes. There was quite a long wait, but the food was pretty good. Once I get a few entries from the actual trip posted, you will quickly learn that food was a big deal on this trip. There were some pool tables and other activities at HQ so it was just one big get to know you party the whole night. They had mats for everyone to sleep on and we all eventually settled in for the night.