Thursday, February 12, 2009

7th annual Special Olympics Walk/Ride

This past Sunday I participated in the 7th annual Walk a Thon to benefit Bonaire's special Olympics team. I hadn't done it in previous years, because of my usual Sunday morning church responsibilities. But this time around, I figured that because the event starts at 5am, I should be able to ride my bike from White Slave to Rincon and still get back home in time to shower and be at the High School at 8am to set up the sound system for the 9am church service there.

It was amazing to be part of hundreds and hundreds of walkers and riders swarming down the road past pink beach in the almost full moonlight at 5am. The organizers had a surprise for us bike riders. Instead of our riding the 30km route that the walkers always take, they laid out a 42km route that had us all over Bonaire. We actually rode 48km according to my GPS because we went all the way to Bopec, Goto Lake, and Dos Pos, instead of riding up the long hill at Karpata.

I also cycled out to White Slave before the start and then rode home really hard from Rincon in order to get to the church on time. I estimate I got in 72km (45miles) by 8am, which is probably a record for me.

If you email me I can send you an 18KB kml file that you can open in Google Earth and see exactly where we rode Sunday am. By the way, Google Earth seems to have added a new hi rez section to the map right at the south tip of Bonaire, where it used to be lo rez. Now all of Bonaire is hi rez except for a small part in the north east.

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