As I rode into Snohomish’ soccer fields, I had a sense of deja vu - I’ve already been here! I forgot that when I came out for the 10th anniversary party/celebration for Bike the US for MS, I rode out to Snohomish to ride in with the team on that last day. This time around, we had much nicer weather, and the sprinklers never came on! We’ve begun our “victory lap”; the ride was pretty easy and flat into Snohomish, and we were there before we even knew it. Sully (Larry Sullivan) joined us at the rest stop, and brought a ton of delicious food and beer for us, all of which we plowed through while sitting in the shade and filling out our “cards”; sheets of paper where we each wrote something that we wanted to leave our fellow cyclists with. It’s no secret that I didn’t bond with this group as much as I have in the past, but it still is awesome to share an experience like this with a bunch of fellow adults, and I think I made or cemented a few relationships that will last me moving forward. People we care about from other rides have started to trickle in, and that’s what’s fun: this has become more than a single ride for me, it’s become representative of a community, a community of people of all ages from all over the US; people I would never have met otherwise that have become friends.

As a sad side note, we rode past Oso, the town where in 2014, a landslide killed 43 people and buried a small town. A reminder of the power of Mother Nature.