Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Hanging out in Alabama

On Thursday, we made our way further onto Alabama and made it to Tuscaloosa. Our hopes were to stay at the Kappa Sig house on the Bama campus but the house was closed for the summer. Wanting to look around the mansion of a house, we moved around the back door where Evan ran into the house mom's grandson who got us inside. Meeting the house mom, she found us some numbers of brothers still in town and Evan got to calling them while I looked for hotels. Just as I was ready to leave, the chapter president called Evan back informing us that we would have a ride in a few minutes.

Sure enough, a SUV swung around back and Brother Scott jumped out, ready to take us to his place where two empty beds awaited. After unloading our gear, we went over to a couple of other Kappa Sigs houses to hang out and do laundry. They were all pretty interested in our trip and we exchanged stories of parties and socials until we couldn't stay awake anymore. Knowing that our ride would start early we got to bed late for a few hours sleep.

Waking before the sun, Evan and I snuck out of Scott's house and made our game plan over hotcakes and sausage at McDonalds. Our original plan was to make it as far as possible to Montgomery, stealth camp, then bike into town the next day. We set up a warmshower in Montgomery with a couple, Dick and Anita. Dick offered to get us at our stopping point between Tuscaloosa and Montgomery. We made it to a small peach town named Maplesville and holed up in a Subway as we got our first rain shower of the trip. Thankfully, Dick got there soon and we chatted about touring while the wind and rain rattled the double pane next to us. The photo below doesn't really do it justice, it was raining pretty hard.

We soon found out that Dick and Anita were real cyclist, doing many cross country trips together. Dick had done eight himself and is planning to do the TransAmerica trip soon. We got to Dick's house while the rain continued and found that we had our own beds and a fridge full of more Gatorades than we could ever finish! We couldn't believe how nice this couple was, inviting us to dinner with their son-in-law Jack and his kids and giving us the keys to his house, van, and lake house for the next day.

Saving us a night in a hotel and a car rental, we took Anita and Dick's car offer and drove to Auburn to check out the campus and my apartment for next year. The campus had grown up since the last time I was there but the lemonade at Toomer's drug store was still amazing. Next year should be fun!

We got the van back to the house and we made Dick and Anita (mostly Evan) dinner. It was the first time we had cooked since home and had a real sit down meal, talking touring the whole time. That night, we checked out some of Dick's favorite cycling blogs and he gave us a good route out of town towards Troy.

Today, we found out the if we delayed one day, we could meet up with Evan's mom in Georgia so we got a hotel for tonight. Wanting to relax one more day, we cycled down to the movie theater and saw "The A-Team" and snuck into "Getting Him To Greek" for a movie marathon. The A-Team is definitely a must see.

Coming home we found some sporting stores to replace some tires. Coming out of Mississippi and into Alabama, I popped the front tire and slashed the back tire with a sharp metal plate on the road so we found some extra tubes on the way back. Tonight we packed up and are waiting for our ride tomorrow. We're heading down 231 to Troy which is only 51 miles. The shoulder looks pretty good here so tomorrow should be smooth riding. Only a couple more days until the Georgia boarder!

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