Wisconsin

Our ride to Waukesha wasn’t too bad; we didn’t have a tough head wind for most of our 95 miles. We had an arrival which, I did not get to ride in because when I went to grab my bike to ride to the picnic and my front tire was flat. It was probably from the many potholes I nailed riding into Waukesha. We had great lunch and friendship visit with the workers and clients of independent first.

We had an awesome dinner at a Pi Alpha’s parent’s house, which is right off a lake. We got to go jet skiing, tubing and play Bache ball. Tomorrow we have a tough 15 mile ride into Milwaukee.

Two fun filled exhausting days in Milwaukee. Our schedule was pretty packed for these two days. The ride was fun into Milwaukee, our pace line tried to do the golden arches challenge by going through the McDonald's drive through and ordering something off the dollar menu, but there were no McDonald’s on the way to Milwaukee so the challenge will have to be done another day. We had lunch at a local school where we were able to play wheel chair basketball, softball and tennis. We also play goal ball, which is a game for people who are visually impaired. So we put on blackout goggles to see what the game is like. The object of the game is to throw the ball, which has bells in it so that everyone can hear it on the opponent’s side and get it past them, which equals one point. Later that night the team decided to explore the downtown area of Milwaukee, which was a lot of fun.

On our day off we had breakfast and Independent First, which is an organization that serves people with disabilities. They also sponsored all of our events for our two days in Milwaukee. We also got our care packages that morning, thanks mom and dad. After breakfast we did a KOB presentation at a local school. I participated again and it went much better. The kids have some very funny questions, most of which have nothing to do with our puppet show.

Later that day the team had a lot of fun playing wheel chair hockey at a local skating rink. At night we did an accessibility survey at a local mall while we spent time with pre-teen and teenage girls who have disabilities. We helped them develop some of their social skills in different situations. There was one family that had five girls, all of which has disabilities. There father has to work 80 hours a week mostly for the hospital bills. Hearing some of her stories was a real eye opener for me.