Well I landed in Seattle safe and sound. I called one of the Journey of Hope guys and had them come pick me up at the airport, and in about thirty minutes they were there. The crew guy driving the van already had two other cyclists with him so I put my bike and bags into the van where I could find room. And this was when I met the first three guys of the 28 that I would be spending my entire summer with. I am not going to lie I was a little nervous but also very excited. The first three guys I met where Chase, Bryce, and Paolo. My flight was delayed by an hour and a half so I was late getting to the hotel we were staying at sp we were in a rush. We threw our stuff in our rooms real quick and had our first team meeting. We started by going around the room and saying our name, where we are from, what school we go/went to, and what we are studying/studied. We also had some of the national Push America staff there. They are staying with us for the first few days to make sure everything got running off to a good start, and I was finally able to put a face to the voices that I have been talking to for the past 6 months about the Journey of Hope. As we went around the room introducing ourselves I just looked around trying to comprehend how these 28 complete strangers were going to become my best friends over the next 71 days. All I could come up with was this summer is going to be a wild, crazy, incredible, unforgettable, and life changing journey! After the team meeting was over we all got in the vans and headed to the University of Washington where they where grilling burgers and hot dogs for us. We all got there ate and then re introduced ourselves and started going over the policies and procedures and the rules of the road that Push America has for the Journey of Hope. Then we did a little ritual that each Journey of Hope route does on the first day. For it we just went around the room said what our name was again and said what made us do the Journey of Hope and why we wanted to do it. It was really awesome to hear these guys give personal reasons of why they were here and what they wanted to get out of the summer. It broke down the walls we had and really let us to start to get to know each other. Then we had the night to ourselves so some of us just explored the city of Seattle and got some ice cream at a restaurant called Dick’s and called it a night. On Sunday we just woke up ate breakfast and headed to REI, which is a recreational store. It was the largest REI in the country. It had everything including a waterfall, climbing wall, a test bike trail, conference rooms, and a huge sales floor. It was pretty awesome to walk around it. Then we stayed there all day in one of the conference rooms they provided for us and went over the policy and procedures to make sure we all knew all the hand signals and safety rules we would be using this summer while we were biking across America!! A Pi Alpha(someone that has participated in a summer event of Push America before) brought us lunch for the day. After that we had our first friendship visit at the ARC of Seattle. It did not have the turnout it was supposed to so we had to change the plans a little bit. But it was still a lot of fun and was a good opportunity to learn what to do and how to act when things don’t go as plan, since plans will change often over the summer. And this is when I found out that we did not have somebody there to put out bikes together like I thought we were going to. So it was interesting trying to put my bike together when I did not know how it was taken apart and have never put one together. But luckily a few of my teammates knew what they were doing so they helped me out and made sure that I did it right. We had another free night in Seattle so a big group of us walked around Seattle and got ice cream again. Then we walked to the Pier and walked around for awhile. As we were all walking back to our hotel and joking and talking about nonsense I realized that I have only known these guys for less than 36 hours but it felt like we have been friends for months. This is when I realized that these guys were going to slowly go from strangers to my best friends in a short 2 months.
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