We're riding for you Paige

We were awakened in the middle of the night by a terrible storm that resulted in all of us being soaked. At that time a few of us checked our phones out of habit and received a devastating email from the Bike & Build office. Earlier in the day, a Providence to Seattle leader, Paige Hicks, was struck and killed by an over sized vehicle while riding in the shoulder in South Dakota. The email was incredibly informative but it left all of us in our tent shocked and overwhelmed. Many of us didn't sleep that night.

Two of our riders knew Paige quite well. Connor played frisbee with Paige at Brown and Sarah also knew her from Brown. In addition, all four of our leaders had worked with Paige in planning our trip this year as she, herself was a P2SF09 alum.

The next morning was cold and dark. We had a 4 am wake up call due to our scheduled mileage for the day, and you could feel the somberness in the air almost immediately. As our leaders gathered us around to officially tell us about the accident, it really hit home. The scenario was far too familiar. Paige was a good, experienced rider. It was an accident, and a terrible terrible one at that.

sporting some "face painted" PH's on our ride

We were given the option to ride in the van because all of us were quite shaken up by the awful news. Many took the van option, and we all set out for our century day. Before the ride, as our only immediate way of showing our tribute to Paige, we each took grease off our chains and wrote PH's on our calves to demonstrate we were riding for her. We are thinking of Paige, the Hicks family and our fellow P2S riders. It is a sad sad day for the Bike & Build family.

As I said earlier, it was an appropriately cold, dark morning. When we finally made it to lunch, we learned that Sarah had an accident around mile 12 and was at the hospital. We had heard rumors of a broken collar bone as a result of flipping over her handle bars. We were all anxious for updates but had to continue on our ride.

We rode together in a pack of 8 for the entire 100 miles. The second half of the day we stopped every 6 miles to kind of regroup and chalk messages to each other.

Around mile 80 we got news that Sarah was in fact "broken" and would be needing surgery in Denver. As much as we all didn't want to admit it - we kind of knew then that she most likely wouldn't be able to finish the ride with us. As of now, we are hoping that she can meet up with us to cross the Gold Gate Bridge in August.

We Love You Sarah!

We crossed the Colorado state line today, a day we have been waiting for for weeks. It is amazing how quickly priorities can change and how quickly your world can be turned upside down. Crossing the state line was both bitter and sweet. It was encouraging to have something to celebrate and feel accomplished about, yet at the same time we were all so overwhelmingly emotional about our difficult and exhausting day. We send our warmest wishes and big hugs to you p2s'ers. We love you and we will do whatever we can to help you get through this!