Into the Wild

“It is important in life not necessarily to be strong, but to feel strong. To measure yourself at least once. To find yourself at least once in the most ancient of human conditions. Thats the way it is here.”

Into the Wild is a book/movie, written by John Krakauer, depicting a story of a man who had recently graduated from college and decided to test himself.  Giving himself a new identity, he burnt his social security card and all of his cash, ditched his car in the desert and hitchhiked himself across the nation. Once he had made his way across the country he decided to go to Alaska and live in the wild.

One of my favorite movies, Into the Wild was an inspiration for my participation in this trip. The above quote stuck with me, and this is my test.  If I am unfortunate enough to never get another chance to test myself in the wild I will always remember the summer we were able to test ourselves my biking across the country for MS. I truely believe in this philosophy. That to live without testing your limits is living without truly being alive.

Today we started our journey from Yorktown. We symbolically dipped our rear wheel in the Atlantic Ocean to officially start our journey west. Today was a great day, I would estimate an average of 80 degrees with solid cloud cover providing shade. A total of around 65 miles, as we finished at Willis Church outside of Glendale Virginia, were in my experience the flattest 65 miles in all of Virginia. I did however learn a very important life lesson today, wheat fields are far far far more windy than tree covered roads, however deceiving they might be with their long straight flat roads, biking in between two wheat fields can be harder than biking up hills. It was a beautiful day none the less and to top it all off we were fortunate enough to be offered an air-conditioned room at the church to sleep in tonight.  This turned sour however, when some of us fell asleep before others, and those who fell asleep, snore, VERY loudly... I ended up moving to another room. It was a wonderful first day of riding, only 59 more to go.

P.S. - I will post pictures soon!