The EMERALD EXPRESS Bike Team Rides The 1999 MS-150 Bike Tour (Rockingham Segment)

If you are reading this page then you can count yourself among the folks that supported the 1999 MS150. You supported me and the MS Society. I was able to participate in a wonderful experience. This year hurricane Floyd rearranged many things. The Eastern North Carolina Chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society annual MS-150 bike tour was one of those things. Kinston was "unreachable" by the roads that the tour was going to take. ENCMS came up with two options for their riders, Take a bus to Rockingham and ride with the Charlotte MS150 the same weekend or wait untill October 9th and 10th and ride the re-scheduled ENCMS MS150. Three of the folks on the EMERALD EXPRESS could not make the October date so we all decided to ride with the Charlotte crowd. The Raleigh part of the Emerald Express got to the MS office in raleigh around 5:30AM Saturday AM (we had checked in our bikes the night before) and took a bus ride to Rockingham NC. There we met up with the rest of the EMERALD EXPRESS and took off for Florence South Carolina. The Charlotte ride was originally scheduled to go to North Myrtle Beach but hurrican Floyd changed that too. So instead we all rode to Florence, spent then night and rode back to Rockingham. The ride was great fun and the biggest bike ride I've ever seen. Over 1700 riders from North and South Carolina converged on Florence Saturday afternoon and left in waves of about 125 riders on Sunday morning for the ride back to Rockingham. What a group! It was a completely different experience that the MS150 last year from Clayton NC to Kinston then to Emerald Isle. The one thing that was the same was the absolutely great bunch of wonderful volunteers! that took care of all those bikers. We had a great time. I think all the folks on our team were gald they did it. Greg Thorne got sunburned the first day, Scott saw a bike "T-BONE" a Ford in Hamlet NC, Robert, my son, rode by himself and beat us all, except Scott, to Florence. Olivia, Rob Gage's daughter kept trying to slow her poor old dad down so he would have some left for Sunday. Rob replied, "I rode a 'century' before you were born!" On Sunday both Olivia and young Rob beat us all back to Rockingham, and it was uphill and against the wind! David Sakell's wife Amy drove down to Florence to and back to Rockingham to support David (they only go married last summer, explains that). Last year when I wrote all the folks that supported me in the ride and told of my experience I thought it would be great to have a team this year. Well, it happened and it was great. What a great bunch the Emerald Express turned out to be. I hope we all do it again next year and we add some more riders. I can think of at least four who wanted to be in the ride this year but were not able to.

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This page last updated Monday, September 27th, 1999

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