200 Words

Bob, of bob's yer uncle, has started a little writing exercise: every Tuesday he's going to post a piece that's exactly 200 words long. He posted his first piece today. It's not a challenge or anything, but it seemed like an interesting thing to do, especially when you are sitting at work with ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO. So I thought I'd try my hand:

200 Words

I rode my bicycle from San Francisco to Los Angeles. It was hard, but not as hard as you might think. After all, I had been training for almost a year.
I didn't ride alone. 1,839 other people rode with me. We had each raised at least $2,500 for AIDS treatment and research. Riding our bikes to Los Angeles was our reward.
The ride took seven days. We set off from the Cow Palace on Sunday and arrived in Los Angeles on Saturday.
The Cow Palace is not in fact in San Francisco: it is in Daly City. But it is right at the city limit; as soon as we cycled out of the Cow Palace we were in San Francisco. So we did ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles.
At night we camped.
On the sixth day of the ride, Friday, I spent much of the day crying. The physical effort had left me emotionally naked. I cried because I felt unbearably alone in the midst of a couple of thousand people. I hadn't expected that. I had been expecting a miracle to occur and change my life. There was no miracle.
But my life may have changed.