Ornoth

The following is a transcription of a phone post that originally appeared in my main journal, here.

Good morning! It’s a little bit after 5am, and I’m at the PMC start for my 14th and final ride and the weather isn’t bad right now: it’s about 66 degrees, which is surprisingly warm; it was supposed to be much colder. It’s wet and a little sprinkly but the rain really hasn’t arrived yet, and if we’re lucky won’t arrive until midday, and hopefully by then I’ll be pretty close to the end. Still, I’m rigging for foul weather and expecting the worst. So we’ll see how it goes. I’m also pleased that it’s so warm because I left my arm warmers and my rear fender in my friend Jay’s car last night. I’ll pick them up partially along the way at the second water stop. But if it was colder or wetter, I would have missed those this morning, badly. Looking forward to the ride, looking forward to having today over, mostly because of the probably discomfort from the miles in my legs from yesterday, as well as the rain that’s promised. But had a very inspirational opening ceremonies last night; check it out on the web on wbz.com. They have a lot of their stories from the PMC this year online that you can stream. Otherwise, I’m just gonna go line up, wait for a little bit, and then hit the road. I will be posting updates as much as I can, pending the obvious intervention of rain and so forth. Tracking should also be up at this point, so feel free to follow me on that, which is at whereis.ornoth.com. That’s it for now; hopefully my reports will continue to be positive. (laugh)

The following is a transcription of a phone post that originally appeared in my main journal, here.

Hi! It’s quarter to four and we’ve just arrived in Sturbridge, after a long ride which included a little bit of rain: a thundershower that just barely clipped us as we rode by. The guys are now in the pond here, cooling off. I’m gonna go into the hotel to register for the next two days’ ride. Overall not a bad day; everybody’s a little bit achey and a little bit sweaty, but we’ll fix that in short order. For me the rest of the day today is getting ready for tomorrow, which is going to involve another 125 miles. But we’re here safe in Sturbridge. Gonna enjoy the rest of the afternoon, get some food, get registered, and will probably check in again tomorrow morning sometime, just before the ride starts at 5:30. This evening also we’ll check out the opening ceremonies here, as well. But that’s it from here, things are generally pretty good: happy with how the ride went and looking forward to tomorrow. So we’ll see how it goes.

The following is a transcription of a phone post that originally appeared in my main journal, here.

Hey, it's late Friday evening on the eve before the Pan Mass Challenge kicks off.

I'm out in Sturbridge. We came out pretty early today, so we got to hang around the hotel, and there's a nice pond behind there, so we hung around there, saw some ducks, and just kind of took it easy for the afternoon, which is a pleasant change.

Also, at the same time my pre-ride emails generated about a dozen new donations, so I've passed one of my final goals of surpassing $9,000 raised this year, and also surpassed last year's fundraising total, as well. And I'm about $200 short of having raised $10,000 this year, which is more than I had raised at this point in the year ever before. So this has really been a great year and I very much appreciate all the donations and everyone's support, because it's really been a fabulous year for fundraising, even at this early date. There's always more donations that come in after the ride, but everyone's been very forthcoming and very supportive this year, and it's very much appreciated.

The only real other news as far as today's events was my buddy Jay, who was biking in from the New York border. He did the extra 95 miles for the 3-day ride going all the way from the Massachusetts border. And he actually destroyed his rear wheel less than an hour into the ride and got really lucky, got a replacement, and actually I was able to catch up with him and surprise him on his arrival in Sturbridge at the end of the day. So that was kind of rewarding.

Also things look really good for tomorrow. I think it's going to be a really sweaty day; it's going to be certainly in the upper 80s and very humid. So it's going to be very summery, with the potential for some showers at the end of the day; we'll see how that goes.

The only negative right now, and it's a very minor irritation, is I managed to re-infect myself with some of the poison ivy that I had maybe a month ago. It's just a couple small spots, but it's on my hands, so that's a little bit of an annoyance, but it's only a minor inconvenience.

Looking forward to a real nice ride tomorrow. We'll be taking it easy, and coverage will start at 5:30 in the morning when we leave Sturbridge, and I'll be checking in periodically throughout the day at each rest stop. Look forward to that! But so far everything's going well, and I'm very happy and very excited to have a great ride tomorrow. So I will talk to you then! I hope you'll enjoy the updates. Thanks!

The following is a transcription of a phone post that originally appeared in my main journal, here.

Good morning it's the perfectly dark hour of 5am and I'm lined up in Sturbridge for the start of this year's Pan Mass Challenge. Nice and early, got half an hour yet before the start. So should be all set and ready to go.

Sturbridge here is -- I'm going to work on giving you a few factoids along the way -- Sturbridge is the home of Old Sturbridge Village, which is a 200 acre colonial living museum, a place I visited as a youth and an interesting town.

A little bit further up the road is Charlton, which we'll be passing through about 5:40, where Grizzly Adams, the famous performer for P.T. Barnum's circus is buried.

And a few miles beyond that is Oxford, the birthplace of American Red Cross founder Clara Barton, who was actually born on Christmas Day.

That's the notes until we get to the first water stop, and hopefully things will be good between here and there. It's obviously dark; the roads just are a hair wet but the rain has long since stopped. Most of the roads are dry, at least the primary roads.

So it looks like it'll be a good day. I'm standing here with two or three thousand other cyclists, shoulder to shoulder in the middle of a parking lot waiting to get the firing gun.

Things are still coming together, but looking forward to a great ride. And the next update will probably be sometime around 6:30am, probably also before you're awake. But off we go, and looking forward to a good ride.

The following is a transcription of a phone post that originally appeared in my main journal, here.

Real quick update from Bourne [ed: Sturbridge, actually]. It's about quarter of six and we're all lined up and it's just a mass of bikers here but everybody is happy. Weather is good so far, the sun's coming up, and ready for a good ride. Thanks for staying tuned to the updates, and I'll have another one for you in an hour or so. Talk to you later, bye bye!

The following is a transcription of a phone post that originally appeared in my main journal, here.

Hey this is Ornoth and it's 6am and we're about to leave Sturbridge. Gonna be a hot and muggy day, with a little possibility of thunderstorms, and we're about to leave, and I hope you can hear me through all the noise. There's 5,000 cyclists here and there's 2,500 volunteers along the route. Should be a great day and thank you to everybody who's sponsored me. And I hope everybody has a good weekend, and I hope I will... I'm looking forward to it. I'll talk to you at the next checkpoint, which should be an hour or so from now.