Monday, July 11, 2011

Mahlique National Parks Conference Call June 17

Mahlique Thomasville, AL June 17

Today I woke up from a long and cold night at the Jackson, Alabama police station.  Thankful though that we had a nice place to rest and we were indoors away from bugs.  It seems everyone in the south keeps the A/C super low.  It has been hot with temperatures reaching near 100 degrees.  Anyway, we got up very early (5am) and started the ride before it got too hot. We rode about 23 miles to our first rest stop. Before we got to our first we all realized why people said the worst part of the next trek was "the dogs".  There were so many dogs but luckily most of them were chained down.

After our first break we started to ride again and this time we rode 25 miles. I stayed in the back of the pack to ride with Kevin, he was struggling a bit today. He has been riding everyday with us and staying up late to manage the website.  I think he has been getting about 3-4 hours of sleep.  During this stretch of the ride Bob and Kevin told us that it was only down hill for 8 miles but boy were they wrong! There were so many hills but my group and I made it and it was getting hot!

We then saw my mother and she picked us up because we had to call the National Park Service via skype. She rushed us to Thomasville we had like 10 minutes to go live, we were hot, sweaty, and we had to throw on our National Parks shirts over our cycling jerseys while in the car.  There are 12 of us already cramped so it was crowded, but we did it.  We were calling into their national conference in Cincinnati at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. It was cool because we knew they could see us but we couldn't see them on the small computer we had on the top of the van hood.  The conference call with them was really great, we thanked them for being our biggest supporters on this trip.  We all got to introduce ourselves and answer their question.  I hoped they enjoyed meeting us all.

Sent from my iPod

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