"You make cycling look good."

That's what Adam said to me at lunch today, our first official cycling day. Mary then said "Yeah, when you were out ahead of all of us I was thinking 'who is that? She's really hot!'" :-) Not a bad start!

Today started with the first time through the typical morning routine. Each morning we have two hours to get up, eat breakfast, pack the trailer, get our gear ready, have a route meeting, and get on the road. It seems like that should be easy to accomplish in two hours, but with 32 people it's actually a pretty tight schedule. We managed to start pretty close to on time today though, and hopefully we'll just get faster at it.

We started out by going a couple of blocks to the ocean, to dip our wheels. It was a bit of an ordeal to get to the water, as there was 50 yards or so of marshy land between the side walk and the tide, but we decided to go for it anyway. All the shells in the sand were flat tires waiting to happen, but only Sarah K ended up with one. After she was all fixed up we took a bunch of pictures and then kind of stood around staring at each other.

"Um, you guys can go," said Jake, one of our trip leaders. Well alright then, let's get going! I was really anxious to get on the road, so I was in the first group out. There were 8 or 9 of us, and I was in the second spot behind Dr. Jon (who just got into med school at Penn). A couple miles in though he stopped to chalk a tricky turn for the groups behind us, so then I was in the very front, leading the way! It was pretty awesome, being the first person in the first group. I felt like quite the trailblazer. I led the way for probably 10-ish miles, then fell back a bit when post-long-stoplight sluggish legs took awhile to get going again. Then Adam, Mary, and I got cut off at a light so we biked the rest of the way to lunch just the three of us. The roads were mostly busy highways so that wasn't ideal but it was flat and not windy.

Today was a short day, only 32 miles, so after lunch (for which no one was really all that hungry but we ate anyway because, hey, free food!) we only had 10 to go. I set out with Mary and Will and led the way, and as we pulled into Moncks Corner, our stop for the evening, I looked behind me and Will had magically materialized into Adam. I felt kind of bad for not even realizing that Will had stopped--what if he had been injured and I just didn't notice and kept going?--so I'm going to try to keep better tabs on my group tomorrow.

Since it was such a short ride day we have the whole afternoon and evening free, which is great. I'm hoping to find a place to practice in the church. I practiced every day in Charleston and I hope to keep up the routine this summer, especially on shorter days. At first I was really embarrassed to sing within ear shot of all my fellow riders, since hardly any of them have ever heard a classical singer before, but they've all been really nice about it. Actually, they're really good at keeping me on my toes--several people ask me every day "Have you practiced today?" I'm not expecting to make profound technical strides in my singing this summer, but I have a big fall coming up so I'm hoping to at least stay in relative shape. I also have all the music I'd like to sing on a fall recital with me, so I'm hoping to learn all of that. We'll see!