I forgot to include in my post yesterday, but special thanks to my home parish of St. Joseph’s, Freeburg for their financial and spiritual contributions to Biking for Babies as well as their energizing send off this past Sunday morning mass concluded by Father Mark Reyling’s blessing of the ride before we hit the road for the drive down to Louisiana.

Stay tuned for tonight’s post by Jimmy covering the details of Day 3′s journey!

Well, the ride from Columbia to Jackson, Mississippi today was a success–102 miles, 96 degrees at the conclusion of the ride, light winds of every sort–headwinds, crosswinds, and perhaps the occasional tailwind, but we never noticed those…

Oh, and did I mention hills? Yeah, they were everywhere. Stacy seemed to be the most successful at our informal games of “King of the Mountain”. She’d just pop up those hills like it was fashionable or something (Yeah, I know, a terrible metaphor, but it’s the best I could do…)

Stacy also was able to maintain her average of one flat per day–congratulations Stacy. Thanks to “Aunt Teddy” at Holy Trinity parish in Columbia where we visited last night, we were able to find more than suitable hospitality at the home of “Aunt Teddy’s” niece and “nephew-in-law”, Tom and Lisa.

Special thanks today once again to the Great Stephen Barany who was ever faithful at the wheel, Tom, Lisa, and Elizabeth, for so graciously inviting us to their home (especially on such short notice!) and serving up such a fantastic supper, and Father Scott Thomas at St. Francis of Assisi for celebrating mass for us.

Tomorrow holds much promise… 130 miles of it, maybe a bit less… some soreness will probably start building up on top of the heat as well… Word on the street around here is that things will get very humid tomorrow as we ride towards the Mississippi Delta near Greenwood, Mississippi where (a different) St. Francis of Assisi will be hosting us.

Stay tuned for video from today’s ride tomorrow afternoon and check out the great video of today too! Click here.

Day 1 of Biking for Babies 2011 is complete!

We had a great ride and we are happy to share a little bit of our ride with you through this video:

What do you think? Will keep praying for our safety?

Also, Eric and Stacy wrote up a little post about their bike yesterday. You can see it here.

Thanks for all of your support!

Hey everyone, Stacy and Eric here,

So our first day started off pretty well. A special thanks to Gary and Tammy O’Brien. who gave us a great night sleep and a tasty breakfast. We left around 5:40, literally dipped our bikes into Lake Ponchatrain (after a quick 12 mile “out-and-back” to get there from Covington, LA,  and headed off. We discovered how strong Eric and Kevin are on the bike, not that much of a surprise. We averaged about 18-20 mph, we were expecting to finish up the ride pretty quickly but then a small staple was placed in the nicely paved rode and pierced my tire (Stacy). It was our first flat, and let me just say that I did not get one flat the whole 500 miles last year, so it’s not because I’m a girl. So that was exciting, good thing Jimmy and Mike had the supplies and skills to fix it in a jiffy. So about 30 minutes later, Eric was wondering if I could tell if he had a flat. I looked over telling him that he would be able to tell and as I looked Kevin who was in front of me decided to check out Eric’s tire. Bad IDEA! only because he was drafting Jimmy pretty closely at the time. Jimmy made a little movement or slowed down and Kevin hit his back tire and fell to the side. He managed to fall pretty well (I got to see it). He crunched up and managed to scrape just the side of his ankle and  knee…and face. :D he still looks pretty and there wasn’t blood all over the place despite Kevin’s initial thought. But Kevin was all good and was able to keep riding. Unfortunately Jimmy’s back wheel was messed up due to the direct contact it had with Kevin’s front wheel so that took a while to fix. Hopefully Jimmy’s wheel doesn’t come off tomorrow. What else…. it was HOT, but it is so amazing how we sweat so much! so we stay cool. OOOOKAY, here is ERIC!!! (I created the title by the way) :D

Eric here.  First  off the parishes of Holy Trinity and St. Paul’s of Columbia, Mississippi are awesome–Father Martin Gillespie was so friendly, funny, and filled with the Holy Spirit! They treated us with so much love, care, and hospitality.  The food was absolutely amazing!  One thing that stuck out in Father’s homily was how he asked if Jesus were to need our help right now wouldn’t you want to be one of the first to get in line?  In today’s Gospel Jesus said “whatever you do to the least of my people you do to me”.  We need to protect the lives of the most defenseless, the unborn.  I thought that was a pretty cool way of thinking about it.  Also one of the sweetest moments of the day was being in the back of the bike riding line and seeing four other teammates wearing the same “jerseys” fighting for the same cause.  After today I am confident our team has the stuff it’s going to take to make it through the trip.  Look for some videos on the website soon!

Day 1 summary: 85 miles, 1 flat, 1 crash, high of 90 degrees, 5mph headwind

Signing off,

Eric and Stacy

Hey y’all this is Kevin not Mike…

We made it from Freeburg, IL to Covington, LA. The drive was long but fun. The van was not as cramped as my dad thought it would be and we had fun playing games and listening to my Ipod.

We are resting at a very nice house tonight in Covington and the family is awesome! Their hospitality is amazing we greatly appreciate them letting us stay at there house.

There is no more training, it starts tomorrow… And I am excited as is the rest of the team. We are so anxious that we are starting at 5:30 in the morning! The weather shouldn’t be that big of a problem tomorrow except for of course the heat. Lots of water and motivation from Mike will keep us going tomorrow.

We will keep you posted this week and keep on praying and supporting us!