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We made it!!!! New York City

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So close :)

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The next interesting event happened on Friday when we went to Denny's in Pennsylvania for all you can eat pancakes! After eating I don't know how many pancakes I order two more and right before the waitress brings them to our table I tell Erik "man, I'm full and I don't know of I can finish these next pancakes." Whem she set them down she said; "if you can finish these you'll be the new recprd holder"! Oh man, the pressure! Amd I was already near bursting! Well, whoever's reading this wil be disapointed to know that I didn't set a new record
looking back I wish I had pounded it down but at the moment every bite was bringing me nearer to leaving all my pancakes!
The last funny thing happned yesterday when we tried to fill up our waters from a spiget on the side of a building. Erik touched it first and jumped back saying he had been shocked! I then tried to turn it on and got the tingle he had talked about. We did manage to get it open but only after much jumping and exclamation marks!

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First of all pardon our lack of blogging for which we have no excuses! So to catch you up on a week of events I'll simply hit the highights.
Satuday evening in Ohio was our first and most interesting run in with the law! The cop woke us up at 3 in the morning and gave us the raised eyebrow when we told him we were biking across the country and that we weren't druggies :-) Ultimately, he told us to have a good trip and let us get back to sleep.
Sunday morning as we were nearing Cleveland Erik's rear derailer decided to take a trip into the spokes of his rear wheel which bent up his chain and left us stranded! Fortunately, we were able to cut his chain and Jerry rig his bike into a single speed! That was great except it left him in a super low gear pedalling about 7 times for every one of mine (Nathan). The best part about this setup was that we topped out at 10mph and had to ride 40m to ride! It was a lazy Sunday ride for me but Erik was whizzing along and sweating bullets lol!

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Almost there :)

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Well actually we entered Ohia last Friday

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Leaving Ross's (Nathan's brother) dwelling place :)

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Nathan and Ross’ family after the 1/2 ironman with Erik in a blue shirt second in from the right! 

Nathan and his mom after the 1/2 ironman.

Nathan and his older brother Ross after both completing the 1/2 ironman Nathan had a time of 5:25 and Ross a time of 6:12.

 

A pic of Nathan with his finisher medal right after the 1/2 ironman in Michigan.

Ross (Nathan’s older brother) coming into the finish chute at the 1/2 ironman in Michigan.

Another picture of Ross making the transition from the bike to the run in the 1/2 ironman!

Ross (Nathan’s older brother) making the transition from bike to run in the half ironman.

Nathan coming into the finish chute at the 1/2 ironman in Benton harbor Michigan

On Saturday Erik, Ross and I traveled from Ann Arbor to Benton Harbor to run in a 1/2 ironman (1.2 miles swim, 56 mile bike and 13.1 mile run).

we arrived in the town, got registered and promptly downed a pasta buffet provided by pizza hut :-) We then got camped and tried to get some shut eye with a sleeping arrangement of us three stuffed into a two person tent.

The first wave of the race started at 7:00 but Ross' and my wave (18-24) started at 7:53 so we got to the transition area early to get our bikes and running gear checked in. We then donned our wet-suits and headed down to the swim start. We chilled in the water and waited for our heat to be called on deck and when our turn finally came we found our spots while "we will rock you" blared in the background. And then we were off!

I don't want to go into too much detail on what happened during the race for that would take far too long but I can simply say that it was an absolute blast and actually seemed to go by really Quickly!

I (Nathan) was fortunate enough to finish the race in 5 hours and 25 min and Ross with his incredibly short training period of 2 months managed to pull together an astounding 6 hour 12 minute race! I know! He's a stud for sure ;-)

It was so much fun and though it's now two days after the race I'm still crazy sore!

Sunday we went to Ross' church and got to meet and talk to some really dynamic Christians that knew their Bibles amazingly well.

And today we thoroughly enjoyed sleeping in and then we spent the afternoon with my family at a water park.