The Midnight Century And More Reason To Hate Opossums

Cyclists revere their first century ride as a significant rite of passage into the world of the hard core. Any poser can shave their legs, but only real riders ride centurys. A century is cycling lingo for a hundred mile ride. In preparation for next weekend's Dirty Kanza, a 200 mile endurance MTB race, Jeff and I decided to take on a century. Then, just to prove that we were real men, we did it at night.
Here is a timeline of exciting events:

8:30pm we finally start down the trail
Mile 0--8:31pm the sun goes down
Mile 1--8:32pm we turn on our lights
Mile 2--we're bored because you can't see anything
Mile 14--an opossum jumps out of the woods and I hit it, crashing, breaking my light and computer
Mile 25--first break, temperature had dropped 10 degrees since start
Mile 35--we see human life at a riverboat casino in Boonville
Mile 40--jeff nearly misses a road crossing guard rail: no more resting your neck
Mile 48--we go through a really scary tunnel and hope we don't meet any new friends
Mile 50--12:30am we take a break but get too cold and don't get to stop moving again
Mile 60--are we there yet?
Mile 75 lots of pain, not many memories + we're freezing
Mile 98--the longest mile ever
Mile 100--5:06am we arrive at the car. The sun comes up

Sounds like fun, huh??

Check Out All The New Pictures

We've added a bunch of new pictures to the kris and ginna gallery on the hendricksfamily smugmug page. So look at them.