Day 15

Howdy!

We awoke to the not-to-distant sound of thunder this morning and a quick check of the radar on weather.com verified what I feared; a large cluster of thunderstorms moving up the river valley right for us. I decided it was best to batten down the hatches and wait it out as we can pedal about 3mph up these hills and the storm was moving about 7mph. I figured it would be better to be dry and off the road for now and head out after it passes.

I put the rain fly on my tent, secured the terratrike under the pavilion and moved me and all my gear into the tent. Shortly afterward the storm reached us and the rain began to pitter patter on the tent, which was just enough to lull me back to sleep for another hour and a half. I awoke feeling much more rested but the rain was still falling though the central part of the storm had moved on up the valley. Chuck & Sharon went for a walk up to the lodge and I stayed in to upload a few more pics and get the blog updated.

I've made a command decision to load the truck with all of our bikes and equipment and drive to Chattanooga some 90miles away. The hills here are causing me much trouble and those 90 miles would take us another 2 days to pedal. I really need to get the drivetrain swapped out before tackling anymore hills or I'm afraid I will just cause injury to my knees and back. Additionally, in having to break up a couple of earlier days into shorter mileages, we are now about a day behind where I would like to be; we should've been in Chattanooga yesterday and today. I would rather the focus be on arriving at Ground Zero on 9-11 rather than having pedaled every single mile. I'll just have to live with that. So, Art, we're on our way to Easy Chair Recumbents in a little while.

Below is a thumbnail that will take you to Webshots where I've uploaded a few more pictures. I've just loaded them to the same "various" file so you'll be looking at some you've seen along with some new ones. I will be uploading some more tomorrow.

Enjoy the Ride!

by TXPeddler