Today I was on food van duty for the first time with Joanna. I have been on water van duty twice before, but had never been in the food van. We had to load the van with everyone's duffle and backpack (that's about 60 bags) which was actually a workout lifting and squishing all those bags into our 15-passenger van. I was a little nervous for today also because our main job was to secure lunch donations for the team, which sometimes can be frustrating if you get a lot of 'no's'. Luckily, Joanna and I were successful with getting a little bit from a few places: Panera, groceries, and sandwiches from local restaurants for the riders for lunch. It was really fun to share our story and mission with the community as we traveled around to find lunch. We then communicated with the water van and stalked the riders on our tracking app, Life360, to coordinate a spot for everyone to stop for lunch around mile 45. We got lots of thank yous from our teammates for the food we got for them which made us feel like we were successful in our lunch van duties. :)
After lunch, our next job was to head to the host to unload everyone's luggage that filled the complete back of our 15-passenger vans. Shoutout to Joanna for driving that big thing...it is definitely a beast! I (thankfully) am not old enough to drive the vans because they are rentals, so I always end up being the navigator/chalker in the passenger seat. We got a beautiful view of the skyline as we headed into the city to get to our host, which was a dorm building at the University of a Illinois - Chicago (real beds again, yay!).
While waiting to check-in, we met 3 of the Seattle riders who were in their lunch van for the day. They helped Joanna and I unpack and were really awesome. Our routes cross paths with their team's here in Chicago so we get to hang out with their whole team and spend our rest day together. That's 50+ 4K riders all together at once!
Joanna and I cheered all of the riding groups in when they reached the host and were glad to have them back. The two of us were getting pretty bored waiting for them at the dorm. We are used to being constantly surrounded by our noisy teammates. :) That night for dinner it was super stormy so we decided to order in for dinner. In true Chicago tourist style, we got deep-dish pizza! Tonight we get to hang out and relax because tomorrow we have a rest day. Looking forward to seeing Chicago with my teammates and getting to meet more of team Seattle!