Little Rock is awesome: who knew?!?

We just got done with our second build day in Little Rock and it has been a blast here. Little Rock is a really pretty town, with tons of things to see and do. We actually had a tail wind coming in and arrived early on Tuesday even though it was almost a 70 mile day, Dennis Plato & I got here by 11:15. We've been staying at a Presbiterian church right in the middle of downtown which has been great. We're within walking distance of everything and the people here have taken great care of us. The Minister here, Flash, has been a fun host and Scott the organist/cook has prepared fantastic meals for us every morning and night since we got here, we're kind of spoiled by now. Anyway, after showering with a hose in the church parking lot with some other riders, I walked up to the riverwalk area with some people to get a bite to eat. I ate kind of a discusting amount of chinese food without even slowing down, then I watched another rider eat the biggest burrito I had ever seen in my life; it looked like a baby wrapped in a blanket, no joke. We wondered around a little more and made it back to the church for our weekly affordable housing meeting. I went to see Indiana Jones afterwards with some other people then went to bed; some people didn't wait until after the movie and slept through more than half of it, can't say I blame them.

Yesterday we split up and half of us went to a site where a prefabricated house built in a church parking lot had been moved and was waiting to be dropped onto its foundation while the other half did some work in the Habitat Restore. We did some prepwork setting anchor bolts for the exterior walls, cleaned up debri from around and under the house, and did some work preparing a car port. Nothing too exciting but we got done early which left some more time to explore.

A few of us walked up to the Bill Clinton Presidential Library which was cool. It's right next to the Heifer International Center, which is supposedly one of the most environmentaly friendly buildings on the planet. I made it back to the church in time to get a good nap in to prepare for a fun night out.

After a great dinner, we all took the trolly to a minor league baseball game courtesy of Julie with Habitat, she got us all free tickets and even got us mentioned on the big screen a few times. We had a tone of fun together at the game and had even more fun going out afterwards. We headed down to the river walk area and went to a few bars and ended up at this great deuling piano bar. The pianists were great and the atmosphere was loads of fun; they even did gangster rap at the end of the night, it was pretty funny.

This morning some of us, including myself, were kind of dragging from the night before. We didn't have a normal build day today, were were more like "Bike & Destroy" than "Bike & Build". We were tearing down a house set to be demolished and saving wood trim, appliances, fixtures, anything that Habitat for Humanity could resell in the Restore. It was kind of fun gutting a house, but I definately prefer building something rather than the opposite, especially when we have to take it apart in a way we can save the pieces. Taking a sledge hammer to everything might have been exciting, but no one would benefit from that. We had another great dinner tonight prepared by Scott, and have one more breakfast from him to look forward to tomorrow. We have our first century tomorrow into Clarksville, 104 miles. Unfortunately I'm due to drive the van so I'll be the only one on the trip who hasn't ridden a century by the end of the day. Oh well, we have plenty more before the summer is over.

One more thing, my mom has been updating me on what is going on back home with the flooding and sending me pictures from the gazzette web site. I hope all is as well as it can be. On a lighter note, I looked at most of the pictures of the most recent Rest Lake weekend, WOW! Glad you guys had fun and I wish I could have been there.