August
9 - 10, 2003 - 6:00am to 6:00am - Our team was at the forth annual Mississippi
Valley 24 Hour Challenge in New Baden, IL. It's a 24 hour long bike race
for 50 riders along mainly farm roads. There was a 55 mile day loop and
a 12 mile night loop. Our team provided communications along the routes,
drove the routes looking for riders that needed help, sat at busy intersections
at night with our vehicle warning lights on to give warning to motorists
that bike riders were on the road, and lined a one tenth mile stretch
of IL Highway 161 with reflective cones and strobe lights to alert motorists
that bike riders were on the busy highway. At 3am, race officials alerted
our team about a rider that had been missing for three hours. Using spotlights,
our team searched every ditch, creek, and tall patch of weeds along the
night loop for two hours thinking the rider may have crashed and was lying
injured off the road somewhere. Around 5am the rider was located. He said
he started seeing things while riding so he stopped at a school along
the night loop and slept for a few hours.
(use the above blue arrows to scroll through pictures)