Day 14: Cleveland to Canton, OH

Date: 6/4/2015
Time: 10.15pm
Weather: Chilly in the morning, hot and sunny when the sun was up
Location: Faith Family Church, Canton

Today's ride was a relatively short ride. It was only 54 miles.

We were running late cause apparently when you had one rest day yesterday, your body hopes for more rest day. Jk. We were up late, and my group was ready to roll by 7.40am. I have Jason, Hannah R., Diego, and Haley riding with mw today. I came up with the team name "5 years old" cause Haley and I were playing while riding, and Jason (I think) mentioned like what are we doing back there and lije how old are we, or at least something like that. Then I made everyone a 1-year old, since there were 5 of us, total will be 5 years old yay! :P

Our ride ended at 2pm. And that was with a long rest during lunch rest stop at Walgreens. Also at about mile 30 we stopped at Sheetz to get hotdogs with Boom boom sauce. Haha 😂 2 hotdogs for only a dollar! #suchgooddeal

As soon as we arrived, we unloaded the van, and just chill. Tony found out about a free chocolate tour like 4-minute drive away from where we are staying. Thanks to Lauraleigh, she shuttled 16 of us for the tour. It's the Fannie May / Harry London chocolate factory. We got to try samples even before the tour started. The tour lasted for 45 minutes-watched a short video clip, brief history of Fannie May and Harry London (First Fannie May is actually in Chicago!), then we got to see how the chocolate factory works. At the end of the tour, the lady provided us with more chocolate and told us to get as many as we want since we're the last tour for the day. As she talked to us, she found out about what we're doing-riding across the country for cancer, she gave us two huge boxes of top quality chocolate- a total of 155 pieces. The dark chocolate with marshmallow is my favorite! :)
Fun fact: White chocolate is actually not chocolate but frosting.

Then we headed back to the church and waited for dinner. We had food donation from one of the local pizza restaurants and Subway. I had 3 pieces of pizza with one subway sandwich. Soooo thankful for the good food that we have!

One thing I have never mentioned before in my blog is that every day we ride for someone. Someone who has been affected by cancer-someone we know. We'll say the name of the person we want to dedicate the ride to, then briefly mentioned his background etc. I just found out that my uncle has a relapse on prostate cancer few days ago. He had surgery last year if I'm not mistaken, but things got worse I guess. :/ So I dedicated the ride to him, Soo Choy Chen, hopefully he'll be strong to get through the chemotherapy and recover soon. Today's ride holds so much more meaning to me. I know that every hill I climbed that made me out of breath, means nothing when compared to what he has to go through. Ride is hard, but when you think of someone who's suffering from cancer, you know nothing is as tough as what they have to go through. I really hope that he'll recover soon. Wait for me to graduate, wait for me to go home, please.

On a lighter note, I think these 3 months will be the healthiest months I've ever had. Sleeping before 11pm every night, waking up at 5.30am every morning, eat alot, yet burn a lot of calories. That's exactly how summer should look like! Hehe!

Some pics of the church and tonight's dinner:

Lame Zack -_-

Lame Diego -_-

That's it for tonight!

Much love.

Day 13: Rest Day in Cleveland

Date: 6/3/2015
Time: 11.30pm
Weather: Little Chilly, sunny
Location: Nehemiah Mission of Cleveland

1. University Hospital Seidman Cancer Center
a) Radiology
We had a short 10-minute tour to see the hybrid machines they have to diagnose cancer. The most well-known ones are PET scan and CT. But University Hospital has PET-MRI scan which is pretty cool. The doctor/staff said that the scans are super efficient amd within 5 minutes everything could be identified. He also mentioned thst it's efficient but dangerous in the sense thst the magnetic field is super strong and people actually die in the machine cause someome brought in a wheel chair or oxygen tank into the room. He also mentioned that the room is "wrapped" with one layer of copper, to avoid the interference of any waves. Just like RAL the room is surrounded by metals so we can't get wifi at all. Everything makes sense now.

b) Infusion
70% of the patients got infusion specifically for cancer at this infusion area, while 30% got infusion for all other kind of disease or disorder like neurological dysfunction etc. The design for the infusion area is made to be as bright as possible by allowing the sun to enter. Also they have trees and garden all around to give the feel of nature.

c) Radiation Oncology
This is actually pretty similar to radiology. We didn't get to visit the place because there's a patient in it, I think.

d) Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital
At the rooftop there was this place calles the Angie's Garden which was dedicated to this teenager who fought against cancer bravely. It's very colorful. It's a place that gives people hope and happiness. They even served us with super good meal-pasta with mushroom, sandwiches, wraps, brownies, chips, and cookies at the rooftop. Happy to know that I4k is the first group to have the chance to have an event at the rooftop this year!

2. After lunch, we went to explore Cleveland for a little. We went to the Cleveland art museum. Looking at the guards there reminds me of the time I work in KAM. Lol. Pretty cool pieces but I was too tired to even care about arts. Got home around 4pm, did my laundry, and had "Taste of Cleveland" buffet dinner provided by Nehemiah Mission Church director. The people in Mission are sooooooo good that they provide us with very good meal, good shower, nice beds, and even shuttle us bringing us from places to places. Tbh these are the kindest people I've seen so far. 

Okay no more rest day tomorrow. I shall better get some sleep cause 60 miles tomorrow and 2000 ft elevation. Much climb much climb... 

Nights, loves. 

Day 12: Ashtabula to Cleveland, OH

Date: 6/2/2015
Time: 11.45pm
Weather: Chilly, slightly windy
Location: Nehemiah Mission of Cleveland

Chilly day today. It was a 8°C in the morning and 15°C in the late afternoon. I have Sean, Lisa, and Shutian rode with me. We started riding at 7.30am and finished the ride by 2.30pm. There were a couple of hills but those were not very big deals. They will help me to get through Colorado, hopefully.

The best part of the ride today is the time when we rode pass Lake Erie. We spent some time there before rolling in.

Tomorrow is our official rest day! There'll be event in the morning but we're pretty much free to do anything we want in the afternoon as soon as the events end.

Thanks to the church for providing us with super good meatballs, Brownies, garlic bread, and super nice beds to sleep on. Couldn't thank enough for all of the generosity we receive! #love #faithinhumanityrestored

Day 11: Westfield, NY to Ashtabula, OH

Date: 6/1/2015
Time: 9.15pm
Weather: 8°C, chilly
Location: First Prebysterian Church Ashtabula

Bye NY! We have finally cruised out of NY after one week of biking in NY. This morning we woke up to a rainy and chilly morning. Ben decided that we could stay in a little longer just so that we don't have to start up our ride in such cold weather.

I had Hayley, Angelica, and Jack in my group today. We rolled out at 7.50am and finished at 4.00pm, getting 75 miles done. It's cold but with 3 layers of clothing, I managed to pull through the whole ride. I was actually sweating a lot but my fingers were frozen. I had Ben's gloves but they were so big that it was really hard for me to shift and grab my water bottle haha.

We crossed the NY border to Pennsylvania, then went on for another 30 miles before crossing the Ohio state line. Isn't it cool that we crossed three borders in one ride?! Hehe  with this it means that we're making our way west, settling in Ashtabula, OH tonight, and Cleveland tomorrow. The day after will be our first rest day! If only it's in Columbus, I'd have spent some time with Munish and whoever is in OSU.

Today was a chilly day. It was such a good weather for a nap. I got tired the entire ride and I fell asleep as soon as I got here. Someone woke me up for dinner, but I fell asleep again before finishing the spaghetti and lentils. Now here I am, ready for a real sleep ! :)

To those who got hurt throughout the journey, take care and get well soon. It is indeed a very tough journey, in the sense that it requires a lot of mental strength. Imagine having to pay attention to every single detail of the road-every holes, cars, sticks, water, gravel, rocks, etc, for about 10 hours every day. Hopefully everyone will be able to ride safe!

Ps: if you are wondering how we ride from places to places, we have these directions we call cues.

Current total mileage: 626 miles

Day 10: Niagara Falls to Westfield, NY-last day in NY!

Date: 5/31/2015
Time: 8.45pm
Weather: 8°C (real feel: 4°C), heavy rain, wind speed 24 kmph (14 mph)
Location: United Methodist Church Westfield

Terrible day to ride today. We left Niagara Falls stayover  this morning at 7.15am and we were told that the rest stops were gonna be at mile 25, 40, and 75. The plannedroute was gonna be 92.6 miles. When we started rolling out, it still wasn't that cold yet. But one hour in, the rain started to become heavier, and it got so cold. I was in the aame group with Angelica (AGAIN), Diego, Sean, and Brian. Despite the heavy rain, we were actually going at 14-16mph. We did 25 miles and stopped at a gift shop.

My fingers were frozen and hardened that I couldn't feel my fingers at all. The finger that was stung by the bee was even worse, it was turning black. I warmed myseld up using the hand dryer in the restroom. I couldn't even open my handle bar bag after 10 minutes of warming up. I stayed in the restroom for about an hour and was finally not shivering anymore. Then I went to Tim Hortons with Liz and Angelica and got a cup of dark chocolate, a nutella donut, a chocolate vanilla donut, and a blueberry muffin.

Then we went back to the gift shop, and continued drying myself. I got some buffalo wing nuts and hot cajun mix fron the shop. I was 6 cents short but the cashier said it's fine. I still ended up paying her tho just that it was 30 minutes later. The person in the gift shop was really generous though, she gave out so many bags to the team cause we needed those. There was a restaurant on the opposite of the gift shop. The lady from the gift shop gave us hot coffee but only Khrystyna and Lisa had it cause the rest of us had already went to get other food.

Westfield is 1 hour 15 minutes away from the first rest stop. Ben had to come to the church to unload the van first, then drive back to bring first group of people back, then finally one last round to fetch the remaining. The last group came in at about 9pm and we had pizzas for dinner, thanks to Zack and Hannah R.

Time to sleep! Forecast says that tomorrow will be a cold day again. Hopefully there'll at least be sun and no more rain. Hope the the clothes will be dry too so we could wear them again tomorrow.

4°C for a summer, totally ridiculous. :3 Let's all hope for a smoother journey! :)

Ps: Third day of not showering. :/ But we're grateful to have people being so nice to us, giving us shelters and didn't mind that we were dirty and all; also people who have been donating food to us for the past week. Everyone has been so nice to us. :') #thankful #goingstrong