Day 30 – Tuesday, July 17, 2001

Garberville, CA – Fort Bragg, CA

67.37 Miles
12.60 Average Speed
5:14:14 saddle time
9AM Departure
4PM Arrival
1895.83 Total Trek Miles

This is Jake, taking a turn at an update.  (I don’t think you really care who is writing the update, but my dear old Dad asked if I would identify myself whenever I wrote, so to be an obedient son I am so doing.)  Our day of riding was pretty much the same as usual.  We climbed about 2500 feet up and out of Garberville, and then dropped all the way back down to the coast.  It was a beautiful ride, and as always a beautiful experience to see the ocean after not having seen it for a couple of days.  As Dan previously mentioned in an update he wrote, we have ridden in some spectacular places, but nothing quite compares to riding along the ocean shore.  The temperature drops, the smells change, and the wind blows (which is a wonderful thing if it is at your back.) 

While our ride was uneventful, our evening in Fort Bragg was both amazing and inspirational.  The Pill family was kind enough to get us a couple of rooms at the local Super 8 Motel, and then fed us dinner at their house (which, by the way Cecil, was delicious.)  We then had the opportunity of spending the evening with Brandon Pill, his parents, and his grandparents.  Brandon has EB (in a pretty severe form) and is about 7 years old.  After our evening with him, we made a unanimous decision that Brandon is just about one of the coolest kids we have ever met.  We got out our video camera to get a little footage of him and before we knew it he had commandeered control of the camera and preceded to do a little interview of each one of us.  Asking us our names, home cities, and what we liked to do besides ride bikes.  He even threw in a couple of comments about why our hair looked so weird, which by the way since being shaved at the beginning of the trip has grown into a series of decidedly unattractive fuzz balls.  As we talked with Brandon and his parents, Ben and Leanne we marveled at their positive outlook and tremendous courage in the face of something so difficult most of us can’t really comprehend it.  Brandon, like all of our other friends with EB, is to us an inspiration not only for this ride, but for how we should live our entire lives.