Remembering Will Streeter at RAIN

From Steve Parker, Wheaton, Illinois

This is just to say thanks to the BBC for putting on a great ride each year, and to tell a story.

Will Streeter, a close friend of mine from South Bend, was an avid cyclist and had done the RAIN ride several times alone over the past years.  Then about three years ago, Will was diagnosed with ocular cancer and had one eye removed.  But he kept on riding, and last year asked me and several other of his friends to ride the RAIN with one of his two teenage sons.  It was a great experience and we all enjoyed it immensely.  The first photo below is of that 2011 group at the finish, with Will on the far right.

This past spring, however, Will passed away at age 49 from his cancer, leaving behind his two sons and his wife.  There was some hope that Will would live long enough to do the 2012 RAIN, but when it became clear that wouldn’t happen, his sons decided to ride the RAIN in honor of their father. So before he died, Will asked me to organize a group to ride with them.  By July 21, we had over 20 family and friends from South Bend, Chicago, Tucson and Boston on our “Remembering Will” team, and a jersey that Will’s sons designed.  The second photo is of that group at the end of this year's ride.  Another of Will’s friends rode Will’s bike, which is in the foreground.

Will’s two sons rode the entire 160 miles, as did some of the others in our group. Others did parts of that distance, many achieving personal goals to ride distances they’d never done before.  Will’s sons crossed the finish line with huge grins, greeted by cheers and hugs from our team.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the two boys do the RAIN again, but 2012 will be the one they definitely remember.

So on behalf of our group I want to thank the BBC and all the other volunteers for their dedication and hard work to make the RAIN a great event!

To Jim and Sylvia

 Friday is the wedding day of Sylvia Stoub and Jim Schroeder.



When has the BBC been the matchmaker between members? We have much to celebrate with them!

Jim served as a very successful RAIN director this year and has promoted bicycling in so many ways, especially those long and longer rides. Sylvia served as Volunteer Coordinator for RAIN and is our Social Chair, developing new ideas for club members to get to know each other besides on rides.

We join all the members of the club in wishing Sylvia and Jim many happy years together.

A cyclist's adaptation of the classic Irish blessing:

May the rain come gently in the night (we need it!)

May the day dawn bright and clear, 

May the day be not too hot (and not too cold), and

May the wind be always at your back.

RAIN 2012 Medallion

It's a small, but appreciated, touch to give each official finisher a memento. Note the iconic BBC "B" and cyclist, the background Indiana motif, the year, the mileage, and the block of dots that mirrors this year's t-shirt and jersey. Math geeks that my wife and I are, the first thing we did when we examined the t-shirt was to count the blocks, assuming they must somehow represent the year or the mileage or something. We never did figure it out!

RAIN Appreciation from Danville

From Dick Whicker, Danville, IN 

Have done RAIN a number of times starting in the early ‘90’s but not for perhaps 4 years.  Though older and slower now, I must say that this was the best I’ve experienced from the numbers of riders, the subtle change in locations of the sags at Plainfield and Greenfield, the start at SMOTW, to the subtle changes in route, particularly thru Indianapolis, that seemed safer than in years past.  I also thought the water wagons with the Gatorade syrup was a great idea as it cut down on the long lines.  Also having ice available was another great idea.  Food selection at the sags was also good, as usual.  I liked the assistance getting thru Terre Haute without having to stop all the time; wish the same could be said for Indianapolis but we too have to “share the road.”  For the most part I thought that motorists were considerate and we riders always need to be considerate too, including stopping when required and not barreling thru stop signs/signals unless motorists stop and allow us to proceed, which I experienced on several occasions.  For the most part when riders are courteous, drivers are courteous. 

As a race director myself, I recognize and appreciate the tremendous amount of effort that goes into an event of this magnitude, so a million thanks to everyone who helped in any and all ways!

RAIN 2012 Part II

This is a continuation of my post on this year's RAIN ride--one person's experience--just a small slice of everything that went on that day.

Last we heard I was changing a flat I shouldn't ever have had, still in Terre Haute. After that our group continued along without problems. It was great seeing those bank signs showing 62 degrees. We made a brief SAG stop around mile 20 and took our first real break at Rest Stop 1 at 231 and US 40. There we saw a few friends on bikes, and a number of club members volunteering to run the site. All was working smoothly. They had plenty of Port O' Johns, requiring only a short wait. It was my first experience with the water set-up where you get to choose your own GatorAde flavor in liquid concentrate. It worked well. It was also my first time to fill up with ice. I really appreciated having plenty of ice available at every stop. It would have been critical if the weather had been much hotter.

Continuing along we made it to Plainfield for the second stop. There we picked up another BBCer, Thom Simmons, who joined our group. Note all the nice shade!

Then we had the stretch on smaller roads as we worked our way south of Indy. This is an area where having good signage is very important. I can say that the combination of road marking and signs at turns was quite effective. Those back roads are a lot rougher and some of the chip and seal rattled my bones a bit and bothered my wrists.

We eventually got to the lunch stop in Franklin Township. Again it was well-organized, although a bit spread out, wrapping around the building. By this time of day, around 1:30 or so the lunch stop was probably beginning to wind down a bit. Having the pre-made lunches in bags was pretty effective. There was no wait to get food. Those Port o Potties were starting to get really hot in the afternoon sun, though.

Continuing along I really enjoyed new ice and drink stop just before getting back on US 40. We pulled into the shade and had some quick snacks and drinks. John Bassett was running the stop and snapped a photo of our group.

As Kathy said when she saw the photo: 110 miles and all still smiling! By this time we were all out beyond our longest rides of the year up to then.

We had another couple of brief SAG stops with Letha Taylor and Mark Gelhausen, plus the Dunreith stop at mile 129. At the latter we took our time. I had two popsicles and two cold orange drinks, used the facilities, even took off my shoes for awhile. Ken tried the mister and came back with a wet bandana over his head, under his helmet.

Altogether the last 50 miles were something of a slog, as expected. That's the time when you just have to buckle down and get the job done.

We actually out did ourselves toward the end, and arrived a little before we were predicting earlier in the day, rolling into the finish at 7:28. As the first-time finisher in our group, Gail led the charge up the final rise and into the finish line at Earlham.

We were all in a bit of a daze (at least I was) but none of us fell over or passed out. We appreciated being greeted by friends and volunteers at the finish line and had several pictures taken.

From that point on it was time for a little relaxing, a cold soda, and soon a warm shower. Even at 8 pm the showers were really busy, with a line, so that the showers didn't even get turned off between riders.

Then it was time to head home, with a quick stop for a bite to eat and to fill the gas tank. We finally arrived back in Bloomington around midnight, tired but happy.

A special thanks to a first-rate group to ride with, including CE Taylor, Ken Dau-Schmidt, Kathy Cummins, Gail Morell, and (for the last 100 miles) Thom Simmons. A double thank you to our SAG drivers, Letha Taylor and Mark Gehlhausen. And a triple thank you to RAIN director Jim Schroeder, his core of volunteer assistants, and the large cadry of club volunteers whose help made the day possible.

P.S. Many more photos and even movies are available on the web. Check out the RAIN Facebook page if you haven't already.

RAIN 2012 Part I

Many of us are still decompressing from a very successful weekend, some club members riding and many club members volunteering to make our Ride Across Indiana a big success. Special KUDOS to the main organizers as well as the cadre of day-of volunteers who made it all possible.

I first rode RAIN in 2001, and didn't actually expect to do it again. But Tom Whitehead organized a Ride to Remember team through the palliative care unit at Wishard Hospital and I was one of 5 Bloomington riders who joined 40+ others. I rode with CE Taylor, Gail Morell, Kathy Cummins, and Ken Dau-Schmidt. Through OWLS we all knew we were compatible riders. We got organized and practiced our rotating pace line a few times and were prepared, as well as we could be.

Our group stayed at Saint Mary of the Woods overnight. We benefited from a special supper buffet provided by the Ride to Remember folks. The dorm accommodations were good and the breakfast buffet provided with the room was excellent. (Note to self: Next time you use your cell phone for a 5:15 am wake-up alarm please remember to turn it off. Being awakened at 5:15 on Sunday morning was not so nice.)

Here's our group just finished with last second preparations in the parking lot at SMOW:

(Note to self: if your tire is flat when you take it out of the car, just change it. Don't inflate the tire with its slow leak, only to have to stop within 5 miles or so to change it on the road.)

The start was neat, but we were so far back that we neither saw nor heard anything at the start. But the giant group of 1300+ riders started smoothly without incident. Here's a photo a bit closer to the start line than we were:

I like to follow bike routes on my Garmin Edge 605 and record basic ride data throughout the day. I was a bit concerned because the 4.5 year old unit has been acting a bit flaky lately. I missed a few minutes at the start because it seemed so slow loading and calculating the route that I started it over. Then 10 miles or so into the ride it just shut down. I bravely but without much hope restarted it on the fly. It started up again and performed perfectly for the next 12 hours! One amusing side effect of the missing few minutes of location data was that it got very confused about my max and average speed. Check out my maximum speed!:

The moving time is a little low because of starting about 3 minutes late and then having to re-boot. The elapsed time is a little high because I forgot to stop recording right away at the finish line. The average speed reflects the jump at light speed early in the ride. Earlier in the ride I had an "average" in the 50 mph range for a while. It gradually became more realistic as the day wore on. But the average moving speed is about right. This screen shot doesn't show the estimated calories consumed: over 9300.
And here's the recorded route:

Here we are changing my rear tire early on (thanks to Ken for the photo and thanks to everyone else for their patience):

One effect of this was that we were riding much more alone afterwards until we gradually started reeling in other groups.

To be continued.

Mooresville Midweek "Century"

This week our head midweek centurion, Jim Schroeder, expected to be busy marking the RAIN route, with assistance from John Bassett and David Yeomans. Therefore during last week's century, the BSSM (Brownstown, Scottsburg, Salem, Medora) ride Jim worked to convince Joe Anderson to lead the next ride. The BSSM ride was a great drive-and-ride out of Brownstown, with great weather. It took no persuasion at all to convince Joe. So after a quick check with Barbara he said he would lead a drive-and-ride from Spring Mill State Park to the Overlook Restaurant at Leavenworth Indiana on the Ohio River. But as the intervening days wore on it became clear that we were trapped in a period of extremely hot weather. More than one rider and/or spouse questioned the wisdom of riding so far in such hot weather. With highs expected around 103 Joe therefore announced that we would do a long ride north from Bloomington, to Mooresville and back, leaving Bryan Park at 7 am on our bikes. As he noted it made no sense to drive during the best biking hour of the day. He also planned out a route with as much shade as possible and that had some "RAIN-like" qualities.

So two of us, Dave Tanner and I, joined Joe for this 85 mile "century."

The route up to Martinsville is totally familiar to BBCers as part of the club favorite M & M Ride. The 20 miles from Martinsville to Mooresville is flatter than anything we have around here. So we treated that part, coming and going, as RAIN training. We also did the 40+ miles from Bloomington to Mooresville without a stop beyond putting a foot down briefly at a traffic light, again as RAIN training for getting to that first rest stop.

The ride to Mooresville was actually quite enjoyable: not too hot, plenty of shade, and that 20 some miles of flat, smooth roads, along the Blue Bluffs road aka John Wooden Interurban Parkway, then through Centerton and Brooklyn. We got there some time after 10 am and had a leisurely breakfast snack at the local McDonald's. We all invoked our "senior drink" in order to be able to fill up our water bottles with ice and Powerade. After reading the Indy Star and eating a second helping and discussing the Higgs boson we by and by set out on our return to Bloomington, fully expecting several stops along the way.

We took the more westerly half of the north loop for our return, using the still fairly shady Goat Hollow Road.

After crossing 67 again, Dave pulled a big chunk of the way on the flat portion, averaging around 20 mph. Our little pace line was finally broken up in the outskirts of Martinsville when a semi slowed and then made a left turn in front of us. I just braked and gritted my teeth, but Joe went around me, then into the other lane to avoid slowing down so much. He then turned his head and let the driver have a piece of his mind. (I doubt the driver heard, of course.) After that we zigzagged our way through Martinsville to the McD's near 37. There, after dreaming of cold ice cream, I opted for a big chocolate chip mocha "frappé". We were all thirsty and beginning to get really warm. While there we visited for some while with the owner/operator, an old friend of Dave's (who had coached the owner's son in swimming some years back).

Eventually we had to get back on the road again. We opted for Hacker Road (the last part of the right hand loop) into Morgan Monroe, for offering more shade. Of course there was a trade-off: a humongous hill climb. I didn't stop, but I sure thought I might have to. The sweat poured out. From that point on I wasn't feeling so good and tended to lag behind a bit.

We stopped one last time at the Firehouse for drinks and to steel ourselves for the last few miles. Joe opined that we had done our six hills (3 out and 3 back), if you don't count Cascades. I said I count Cascades (at the end of a ride). It was a bit of a slog into town. We did use the new side-trail from Business 37 up to the stop sign at the road to Upper Cascades. Without any cars in our direction, Dave had to push the walk button to get a light change.

Soon we split up, with Dave heading home, Joe to a bike shop downtown, and me to home.

Despite the difficult weather I did experience for the first time on a bike the roads between Martinsville and Mooresville and also for the first time rode Hacker Road into the Forest.

I ended up with 85 miles, and an average in the lower 14s. By 2:20 I was home and the temperature was 102. My stomach was cramping a bit and I also ended up questioning the wisdom of biking so far in such hot weather. I was beat.