After all that huffing & puffing, it's finally over!

Whew, we made it!  Here we are after our ride, rested, well fed glad it's over but proud to have done it.  Left to right, me, Juana, Junior, Omar, Esteban, Jonathan and Mr. Olympia, Sergio, in front.  Leo is not in this picture since he was still out doing the century.  He came in about 30 minutes after, when we were heading home.

More of us ready to go!

Here are some more of us ready to go, too. Leo and his mom, Juana.  Leo ended up doing the Century ride.  That's 100 miles folks!  Youth has its privileges, that's for sure.

Ready to Go

Here is part of the group on the starting line set to go, full of energy and vigor.  Left to right, Leo Ledesma, Esteban Fajardo, Sergio Zavala and Junior Gonzalez.  62 miles and counting!

Here we go again!

Well folks, here we go again!  I am doing a bike tour of Lakewood Ranch, Sarasota for the American Diabetes Association with a team of 7 people from our church. We're doing a metric century ride (62 miles=100 km approximately) and  I will keep you posted on our progress!

A new hope

The Agean sea, right outside our hotel window

From here on in, all's well that ends well!!! Thank God.

A quick nap at the second hospital while he recovers

view to Mediterranean outside E's second hospital

I haven't posted anything in a while because of all of the health issues.  As you all may know, Esteban's illness turned out to be much more than a stomach virus.  He was diagnosed here with type 1 diabetes and his sugar was really high, so we spent 3 days in 2 different Turkish hospital ICU's.  They treated us really well and got his sugar down to a manageable range.  Unfortunately, we've missed most of the riding and one of the most interesting cities, Ephesus.  They say the ruins are just fantastic and I've seen some of the pictures, so I believe it.  Here our some of our own pictures.  Jerry Coleman was the rider of whom I posted a picture going up the hill.  He fell and broke his left collar bone and had to have surgery on his left hand with some pins put in for broken fingers.  Jan is his wife.  We stayed at the first hospital together.  This is E when he got to the hospital.

Pamukkale Thermal Resort

The ride today was to the town of Pamukkale, where we are staying at a resort with a turkish bath and spring.  Esteban got sick yesterday and has been nauseaus all day, so he did not ride.  I have a TERRIBLE head cold and can barely breath, so did not ride either.  Man, what a bummer! Hopefully, E will get better.  If not, I will take him to a doctor tomorrow.  We will be here for 2 nights then ride to Ephesus.  Keep your fingers crossed and pray for better health.  All that having been said, the trip has been really good so far.  We have learned so much history of Asia Minor and seen some wonderful sites and we still have some days of riding left.  The pictures are of the group that is riding, the leader of the pack going up a 450M (1476 ft) hill, a 2,000 yr old Roman bridge still used today next to a modern bridge, and the calcite cliffs for which this areas is famous.  Between Sardis and here we stopped at where the church in Laodicea would have been located, which is actually closer to where the Lydian ruins were at.

The church at Sardis (Salhalil in Turkish)

We had a rough day today.   The roads are very bad, almost like riding on gravel, there was a lot of construction, a lot of head wind.  Esteban fell yesterday and hurt his calf.  We thought he could ride today, but about 20 minutes into the ride he had to pack it in and ride with the support car due to the pain.  That set me back quite a bit waiting for him and I lost the main pack, so had to go with group B, which was doing less miles.  That turned out to be a good thing in the end, though.  I was not counting on two things: such bad road conditions and the hills.  Florida's version of hills are speed humps!  I rejoined the main group, but due to the hills I really could not keep up with them: they are all very experienced and have done 10-12 of these bike tours.  The straight aways were no problem, but the lost me on the hills so I just rejoined Group B and did 85km and did some sight seeing.  Here I am after climbing my first hill, about 260M (about 940 ft of elevation), Esteban in the support car, and he and I at a ruin next to the palace of the last Lydian king, before the Persians conquered Lydia and killed him.  By the way, Lydia was the first kingdom to actually use coins as money and King Midas from Greek mythology bathed in the rivers of Lydia.