Voice Post: 2009 PMC Sun Provincetown

[ornoth_cycling]

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

Hey folks, an update from Provincetown. Sorry it took so long, but cell reception here is pretty bad. So I waited until after showers and food and massage and all kinds of things.

Provincetown: let me tell you a little about P-town, because of course it's a superlative area. It's a major tourist resort and arts colony, and oh yeah it's also gay. It is the highest same-sex couple zipcode in the entire United States.

It's also, in 1620, the place where the Pilgrims signed the Mayflower Compact. They spent five weeks here before they left and moved on, eventually winding up in Plymouth.

Obviously the most obvious thing in town is Pilgrim Monument, which is a 252-foot tall tower. It's the tallest granite structure in all of the United States. But it's a copy of a tower in Sienna, Italy. Ironically it's also that same tower is also copied by the Pine Street Inn in Boston, which is a homeless shelter. The tower's called Torre del Mangia (the one in Sienna), which in Italian of course is "the tower of the eater".

But on to the ride: I finished strong, I had a great pull up Route 6 from Wellfleet with Tim from Team Kermit. We had a real good roll up there, and once we turned around at Race Point Beach, we wound up facing directly into a pretty strong wind, but there was a car nearby, so I actually wound up drafting an SUV for a while. And I'm hoping desperately that none of the event photographers happened to catch that particular image, because a picture of me drafting an SUV is probably not what I want to share with all my fellow PMCers

But that brings an end to my audio posts for the 2009 30th annual Pan Mass Challenge ride. Obviously I shared a lot of thank-yous at the Wellfleet stop, but again I can't say it enough. The support that I've had in bringing together more than $50,000 for [???] it has a purpose, and I've adopted that purpose, and your contributions and your helping me to participate in this ride helps give my life purpose. So I very much appreciate everyone's involvement, and hopefully I will see you all and even more people next year for more coverage.

Go check New England Cable News (necn.com). They will have a lot of footage from the ride, and of course I'll be putting together my annual ride report which will come out in a couple weeks, after I get back from a little bit of travel that I have planned next week.

However, I hope everyone had a good weekend; I know I did. And again, appreciate all the support and we'll see you again soon.

Thanks, that's it from P-town!