Suepinda and I just realized that we are operating a day behind. We experience the wonderful event, decompress then write about it. Well, Suepinda has yet to write about hers. Its kinda hard when your doing this, that and everything else that I or Bob isn't doing. Part of this journey will be teaching the boys responsibilty and mindfulness. The girls, as usual, have that down, pat.
Yesterday I didn't get to mention our worldwind trip down south. We left Blountsville, AL and traveled to Birmingham, AL. You may have seen some of the quick Twitter and Facebook updates with images. We met Holly's longtime friend, Steve Dauphin. Holly is Marshall's mom. They worked together 20 yrs ago with cyclists in the recreation of the Freedom Rides of the Civil Rights era. Steve was profoundly speaking of that time with the Youth Cyclist and how he was impressed that they are doing this marvelous trip.
Steve was able to obtain a tour for us of the 16th Street Baptist Church. A church of historical importance during the Civil Rights period and the location of one of many bombings in Birmingham. At this particular location is where four little girls died in the church bombing. Speaking with our tour guide, who was also instrumental in the marches during that time, brought home all of the sacrifices that were made by those before us.
We left B'Ham and headed down to Montgomery, AL and visited the Southern Poverty Law Center and touched that wonderful sculpture in the round. Each Youth Cyclist recited the name of a slain freedom fighter to give honor to those no longer with us but did so much for us. From there we visited the extremely, southernly white buildings of the Montgomery government. They all have the theme of white so they are not hard to mistake for any other building than a government building. They are also with the old style architecture. It was interesting and eerie at the same time.
We quickly left Montgomery and went to Mobile because it was a 3hr ride and we must keep on schedule (for most things). Through Jerry Whortan's fantastic efforts we were accomodated by the Moblie YMCA where they basically allowed us to have a lock-in. CEO David Cook asked Jason and Taylor to stay the night with us to ensure that all goes well. Which it did and I was able to blog about the night before (see I'm catching up). But the boys stayed up past 1am despite precautions not to do so. More on that later... It's time for bed and 5am comes early!
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