Another day broke with the beautiful sun shining down on us and made for a beautiful morning of biking. As we left we met 6 deer crossing the road and enjoyed seeing them bound away. The beginning of the ride supplied us with a good warm up. It is important to not do too much climbing right away to allow our legs to get under us and ready for the rest of the day. We came to a point on our map where it looked like a nice road greeted us. We took to the road and were able to go at a good speed because of the surface and wind (it was not in our face like yesterday). We were looking for a street name at a certain mile point on our cyclometer and that came and went. Then we saw signs for Tullahoma, TN and were slightly encouraged. We saw a road that we recognized on our map and turned on it. We didn’t know exactly where we were so we flagged someone down and they “tried” to give us help. They were more concerned with getting us where we wanted to go rather than where we were on the map. We have our route planned, so to get different directions to our destination and be able to remember them the rest of the day is impossible. We continued down the road and were looking for certain other roads. We didn’t find them so Dad waited till we had gotten to the bottom of a hill to decide to turn around and go back and ask someone else for directions. When we got to the top of the hill we found someone else who basically told us to go to town and buy a better map. Not much help either. We decided to just go down the road, and eventually we would come to where our map would intersect. So back down the hill we went, and got on the phone with Abby to help us find out where we were according to the county maps that are in the car. We found that we had gone out of the way about 15 miles. We got back on track by about lunch. We had lunch at Dairy Queen (this is number 4) and got back on the road to make up for lost time and miles. We stayed on track for most of the rest of the day.
We saw a lot of nice country and livestock around the TN countryside. Being from Marcellus, MI, we see a lot of pigs, but outside of the county there really are not many; but here in TN there is a field of goats seemingly over every hill, which are plentiful. I even saw a goat sitting on a front porch like a watchdog, but we were going so quickly and had such good momentum that I decided not to stop and take a picture. Sorry! It would have been very funny and now I wish I had stopped.
Throughout our ride today, we have come across many run down and abandoned barns and houses. I can’t figure out why since they are in prime locations and had they been kept up they would be beautiful houses.
As we wound our way through the hilly region we followed roads like Johnson’s Hollow and Mobley’s Cut. Somewhere along the way we followed the wrong road, which again took us to the bottom of a long hill. This time we found a man who knew the area and gave us directions back to our route. The day was getting late and the Natchez Trail was a nice path to follow and then to the road that would take us “home”. This was a nice feeling to see the final road of the day until we talked to someone and they said that we had about 25 more miles till we reached the town of Dickon, TN. This is where all of your mental training comes into play and you just put your mind in hammer mode and make as many miles as quickly as possible.
I had been noticing a big dark rain cloud making its way in our direction for the past 30 minutes. Our road going west and the cloud coming east only made our meeting more imminent. The winds started to pick up and then LIGHTNING! I remember being asked by my awesome co-workers at Fab Masters (hey guys hope you are all doing great) what I was going to do in case of rain, and I said that we would just ride, but they were not just asking about rain but about severe weather. Well, here is the plan. Bike to the closest house and hope that the people that live there are nice enough to let you take shelter. That is what we did. The people who lived there never even knew we took shelter under their carport.
The storm past quickly and we were off again. Since we had been hot when we stopped and now we had cooled down, the rain made it down-right cold. It took a few miles for me to warm up again, but I finally did. We made our way to our final destination of Dickson, TN, down very nice roads with wide shoulders. Over the final hill we caught a glimpse of the RV Park where we would be staying, and I finally began to relax with relief flowing through my veins. As we pulled up to the traffic light and the road that would lead us to the park, Dad ran over a piece of metal and got a rear flat. This was the cherry on top of a day where nothing seemed to go the way it was planned.
So we walked the rest of the way. Dad informed me that this was not cheating and that many have walked part of the way in the past and more probably will in the future.
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