Rolling through the hills of Tennessee

Well I’ve fallen behind on my blog entries again, no surprise. We’re coming up on the end of my first week that I organized so I’ve been really busy trying to keep everything flowing smoothly. It’s been pretty draining since my second day we got somewhat lost. I had us taking a bunch of back roads to stay off the main highway going into Dunlap, and it was really nice until the intersections stopped having street signs on them. We got way off the cue sheet more than once, but at least I was in the front group and knew which general direction we needed to go so I was able to get us to where we needed to go, we left chalk directions for everyone behind us.

We stayed in Army National Guard Armories in Sweetwater & Dunlap. It was pretty fun but the AC in Sweetwater was broken and it was unbearably hot that day. We went to Pizza Hut for dinner using a gift card mom left me, (Thanks Mom). They gave us some extra pizzas for free too so we had left overs and it was really nice to eat in an air conditioned building. When we got to Dunlap after being lost a few times, we were relieved to find that their air conditioning was working. SSG McClendon & Donald were our hosts there and they were a lot of fun. They hung around with us until about 5:00 to joke around and get us all set up with cots.

Our ride from Dunlap to Sewanee was awesome. We rode up Daus Mountain Road, which brought us up a 1,500 ft climb over about 3 or 4 miles. It was really hard but everyone was happy to have done it when it was over. I couldn’t make it without stopping, I’m too heavy for a climb like that and could have benefited from a few more gears. I never thought I would be in my lowest gear, standing, working as hard as I could, and only be doing about 4 mph. I tried to capture how steep it was with some pictures, but besides looking down at the switchbacks, nothing really serves it justice.

The rest of the ride was rolling hills, but no big downhill, which made the big climb a little disheartening. Sewanee is a great town and the University of the South Campus is beautiful. We camped out on Lake Cheston just off campus, and we got to go swimming which was really nice. Myself and three other riders rode our bikes out to an overlook where we could see the valley below Sewanee and get a preview of our descent the next day.

We were hosted for dinner by the Monteagle Sunday School Assemble, which is kind of like a summer camp for families in a town 8 miles East of Sewanee. That happened because one of the women involved with the Assemble has a daughter who did the Southern US ride in 2006, so she contacted us wanting to feed us. We had a great dinner and a great time with all the residents there. They loved us and everyone wanted to be more involved next year. It sounds like next years group will get to stay in the Inn there and in people’s houses, I’m kind of jealous but I’m happy to be a part of what made that connection.

Coming out of Sewanee we had a great downhill run right away (finally reaping the benefits from the climb the day before). Some Sewanee locals took us along some great back roads for the first 20 miles, it added a couple of miles to the trip but it was well worth it. It was really nice to ride as a big group again and to get to know some of the locals. After parting ways with our guides, I had us on some nice back roads until lunch. I eventually brought the route back to the main highway because I didn’t want to repeat the trip into Dunlap and get everyone lost again, but in retrospect I should have gone for it because highway 64 sucks to ride on, its basically an interstate.

That ride brought us to Pulaski, TN; a phenomenal host site. The Mayor got us set up in the student housing for Martin Methodist College and hosted us all for dinner at his house. We got to swim in his pool and he even helped Travis & I cannon ball some innocent bystanders next to the pool. There were tons of Pulaski residents there and the food was awesome. Something else that made my day was after we all went around telling everyone who we were and where we went to school, one of the local women there started twirling her fingers in her hair and said, "yea well i got an astrophysics degree from the University of Indiana, and I'm an astronaut on the weekends..." and kept going like a character on Saturday Night Live. I might have been the only one that got it but it really made me laugh. Everyone there was extremely hospitable and helpful; we all felt at home and had a great time.

I drove the van coming out of Pulaski. I made some last minute decisions the night before to change the route and get us off of highway 64. I was kind of freaked out about it because some of the roads on the map looked really sketchy and I wasn’t sure what the conditions would be like. It was a good thing I drove the van; I went ahead with a map and ended up chalking a different route after finding that about 95% of the roads on the map were gravel or peoples driveways. It worked out really well because the roads that I ended up putting everyone on were a cyclists dream. Recently paved, scenic, decent tree cover for shade, and almost no traffic.

We came to Adamsville that night and got another mail drop. Everyone got a lot of mail this time, myself included; it took 4 trips to the van carrying mail to get everything, I even used a dolly for one of them. We stayed at a Methodist church there; they fed us and were really nice.

Today we had a short ride into Bolivar. We were on highway 64 all day which kind of sucked, but it wasn’t as bad as it was in some areas a few days ago. The church hosting us tonight is really nice. There are lots of rooms to sleep in and the youth director Chris who I have been talking to made us dinner and even brought his Nintendo Wii in for us to play, which has been a lot of fun for everyone. Tomorrow we wide into Memphis and will have our first day off since we started. I can’t wait and I know everyone else feels the same way.