I picked Anne up from Ick! (Early Childhood Center), on Friday and me without my hazmat suit. We sloughed through rush hour traffic for over an hour. I’d almost forgotten what a joy that is and landed at Lewis & Clark Community College. Pretty nice place for a state school, let alone a community college. That’s because the campus originated as a hoity-toity private girl’s school. We set up camp, then met Chris and Anne at dinner, along with a few of our other teammates. Checked out the team tent, showered and was in bed by 8:30, when it got dark.

Dawn’s early light came creeping over the horizon earlier than expected and a heavy Midwestern dew had seeped into the tent. The alarm didn’t go off, so we overslept. This put Anne into full panic mode, as we raced around getting dressed, coughed down breakfast, fetched our bikes, but we made it to the start line on time. The rest of the day was just gravy.