My bike computer ran out of batteries.....incredibly hard day, great night.

hello everyone!

Today is my birthday, even though I forgot until 4pm. Last night I had 4 hours of sleep. My body was craving calories and I ate for 2 hours and drank several bottles of water. I was so frustrated because I know that I need to sleep to recover properly but my body refused to shutdown. I wrote a bunch of songs in my head to pass the time. Eventually I went to sleep and woke up at 8 with a smile on my face. It was raining outside and there was a stiff wind coming from the east. Normally a person who has felt like they are dying slowly would be sad about having to bike 160km in the rain and wind for 7 hours. I have realized recently that I am not exactly normal. I opened my birthday presents which were a book on survival in the wilderness and a mug with a moose on it. I think I turned 40 not 18 haha I expected small children to pop out of the bathroom and jump on my stomach. This ride is my birthday present. I think it's the best thing that has ever been given to me, it's changed my life and my perspective in a very positive way...( I was pretty positive before btw). I did a little dance and prepared to go to battle. The day was so terrible. I am not going to get into it because Ii don't want to scare some of the parents that read this thing. I felt like my life was at risk. When the day was over I was just happy to be alive. The shoulder was literally a foot wide. One lane traffic with semis a foot and a half away. Sometimes I didn't have a shoulder and had to sprint as fast as I could to make it to the shoulder down the road. I can't explain to you how mad I was. It was a situation I couldn't control and I felt that my birthday was going to come to an end very quickly. I am way too happy right now to contemplate dying on this ride but the possibility is always there. I would not let my future children do this let me just put it that way. The headwind was brutal and sapped my legs as the day went on. Eventually I reached Sudbury with 20km to go but no water or bars. I was so hungry I felt like puking. I started to bonk on the foot wide shoulder and really pushed myself just to make it into the turnoff for town. Once I reached the car I fell to the 3 inch thick gravel and just about lost consciousness. I shoved nectarines into my mouth for sugar and choc milk and just about everything I could find while being extremely upset with my family for leaving me while I felt like I was slowly dying. Like I said, the ride today was terrible. I got in the car and felt really sick. I had a physio appt in town and got a massage which was really nice. Then I got to converse with family friends for hours and I felt like I hadn't been in normal civilization for years. I got the hang of talking again and started to get back to my old self. Mina is a very nice girl attending Queens in the fall as well. She is so nice that her grad class elected her for prom queen! I got as many photos as I could with the local celeb and when asked what she did with her tiarra she responded "I broke it up into the pieces and gave it to my friends" (perfect answer). I responded jokingly "Well I know I wore my tiarra for months and NO ONE could get that piece of plastic off my head". Anyways, I had dinner at a great greek restaurant with Mina and her family and mine and eventually made it home with my family. Operation "gunshot" was completed at 1100 hours. I had a lot of fun tonight even though I did pretty much nothing. Tomorrow will be really hard I think but I am ready for it. Thank you for all your comments again, I think reading them is the highlight of my day! haha Today someone donated $3,000! That puts me at $38,000 so far. That right there was one of the best birthday presents you could have ever given me and it's not even for me!. I am so proud to be doing this, its incredibly hard, harder than I could have ever imagined and puts me right to my limits everyday on so many levels. I will never give up, its as simple as that. So bring it on.

Goodnight

Adam Beaudoin

Sudbury ON