4-08-08 Get Your Kicks On Route 66

Today I woke up at around 9:00 AM Central Standard Time (CST) without any wake-up call, because there wasn’t one.  I then slipped into a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, and went down for breakfast.  The breakfast was even better than the rooms!  I had two helpings of scrambled eggs, two bagels with cream cheese, two pieces of French toast with syrup, about ten strips of crispy bacon, four strawberries, and cinnamon toast crunch with milk, all with three glasses of orange juice.  Yum .  After breakfast I talked with one of the hotel employees about the Sooners, because the hotel was named after them.  Everybody is sort of waiting for the other shoe to drop after last night's chewing out.  We're not sure if we're going to be sent home or if we're going to continue.  One thing's for sure though, if we do keep going we're going to have to get our work done and quit screwing around so much.  We all sort of gathered together to write journals before we left for Tucumcari, New Mexico.  We left for the road around noon CST after packing, and checking out of the hotel.  We stopped for a snack and bathroom break and were throwing the football around, then we were told to “saddle up” and get ready to ride. We did a group ride today on good ole’ Route 66 for almost all the whole ride.   Along the way we lost Tyrone because of technical problems on his bike.  He's been having pedal problems ever since he ran into the curb in South Boston so we're always having to stop and tighten up his crank pedal. After an hour or so we stopped in this really cute town that some guy named Roger Miller grew up in. There were streets named after him and billboards all over the place and the place looked like it probably did in the 50's.When we stopped Jennifer got pulled into a curiosity shop by some “redneck, barefoot, hillbillies.”  Turns out it was “Harly and Annabelle ‘The Mediocre Music Makers’ at The Sandhills Curiosity Shop in Erick, Oklahoma (The Redneck Capitol of The World!).”  We stayed there for about thirty minutes, and sang with them.  They were very interesting people, and I had a conversation with Harly about what we were doing and why.  On the way back to the truck Thomsen was still talking on the phone and some of us were thinking he was planning our departure for Seattle.  It’s a little un-nerving since none of us want to leave. We then got back onto the road for another hour or so again until there was one more bathroom break.  Along the ride we saw what we called “The Leaning Tower of Water” because we saw a water tower with two of its legs unhinged off the ground.  We also saw the largest cross in the western hemisphere as we drove by Groom, Texas.  Next we got back on the road and into the Best Western Tucumcari, NM at approximately 10:00 PM Mountain Standard Time (MST).