It's 5:30 a.m. and people are just starting to get up and move around for the day. Breakfast starts in an hour. No rain last night! Yay!! We will be packing up dry today, and that is always a bonus. The main concern today is weather. No wifi at this school, so we can't check any recent forecast, but Jeff called last night and said they are predicting severe storms for Hillsdale. And since we're pretty much due west of Hillsdale now, I'm thinking we're bound to get it just before them. Praying for dry weather, but if it must rain then we just hope for no dangerous stuff for us!
(Sam)
Today, a mix of Owosso feels and Greenville weather. It began great. The weather wasn't perfect. Foggy and windy, so our glasses and mirrors got fogged up, but it was fine. Then we had our first rest stop at 8.5 some miles, and we felt great. Time flew by and refreshed as when we started. Happy with that we, continued, assuming the rest of the day would go well. It didn't. At the 20 mile mark, everything began going VERY slowly. Lots of hills and relative time all made the day go crazy slow. Furthermore, I was getting really hungry, and there weren't many rests throughout the whole ride. Until the 35 mile mark of Mottville.
Communication got through to Mottville's only restaraunt and bar "The Jaywalker." However, the amount of riders didn't. According to our waitress, they expected only an estimate of 50 riders from the PALM administration, and we came in numbers of about 500. They also had about 3 servers, so they were overwhelmed, and it took us about an hour and a half to get our food, but as hungry as I was it seemed longer. Finally the food came, and I ate a BUNCH. Then we kept going until a quick storm passed through that forced us to stop for a few minutes on a porch belonging to a very welcoming man. Then we finished, quickly put our stuff up and ate dinner. Wasn't too bad for my tastes, but everyone else loved it. For dessert, they had sherbet. Good day in the end!
(Amy)
First off, I know we have several people praying for us to have a safe trip, so I need to say thank you! This storm that Sam was speaking of was reported to us to be severe, with 60 mph winds, tornados possible, lots of lightning, etc. remarkably, we missed most of it. Some due to the fact that it went further north than expected, and some because of the LONG wait at the restaurant. Either way, it sure helped us out.
So we DID have a good start today! It was quite foggy, and we had a constant mist to deal with for our glasses, but not bad. Some beautiful scenery, lakes, wooded areas. There WERE a lot of hills, but being on this side of the state, it's expected. We just walk or gear WAY down to make it easier. As Sam said, we hit Mottville right around 12:30 in time for lunch. Unfortunately, it was the ONLY place for lunch, and Sam was getting crabby (he definitely needed to eat) and Debbi and I were limping along at that point. So we stopped. So did everyone else. Yes, it did take 1.5 hours to get our food, so we didn't get back on the road till 2:00. Burger for Sam and a club sandwich for me. We gulped it down so fast, I don't think either of us tasted anything. We knew we were too late to miss the storm, so we just road like crazy to try and miss most of it. We made it to about 7 miles before our stop for the night (Three Rivers High School). That means about 45 min or so in the rain. We did have to stop once on someone's porch when lightning started stringing around us, but back out in the rain as soon as it passed.
(That's my handy dandy 97 cent pencil holder that I'm keeping our map dry with. Best investment of the trip!)
So a grand total of 51.9 miles in 6 hours and 13 minutes for today.
Thanks to the rain, we've heard of several people crashing on slippery railroad tracks (one that ended up with a trip to the hospital), and believe it or not one of our support cars got his back window shot out with a BB or pellet gun. ??? Crazy people.
So we're all set up and dried out here for the night. Taking off by 8 tomorrow for Coldwater. We're supposed to be going past a covered bridge tomorrow - should be cool to see! They are calling for sunny and 80 tomorrow, so no weather worries. Jeff is meeting us in Coldwater and dropping off some clean clothes. Then he'll drop Aaron off early Wednesday morning so he can ride the Coldwater to Hudson leg with us. Keep praying that I can handle 50 miles with Aaron attached to the back of my bike!
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