4-06-08 So…Many…Hills…

This morning we woke up at 8:00 AM in Katie’s comfortable beds.  We went to the kitchen and she already had the cereals set up and everything.  It was great.  Later she came back with Jennifer, and some donuts .  We then had a little bit of free time so I started to get caught up with my journal entry's and then walked around the lake. We took some pictures and thanked Katie very much for letting us stay there, and then we left  then we left for what's going to be a very long ride. We drove to the Kings Inn hotel were Thomsen, Paul, Drew, Pat, and Jennifer stayed the night. When we arrived we changed into our riding stuff, and had a chat with Thomsen.  Basically he told us that perhaps he had over shot what we he thought we could do, and decided to let us choose what we wanted to put in the blog. Before leaving he suggested we could talk with at least 3 people a day and write about them, to compare or contrast cities that we ride through and write about things that we found unique or surprising.   He gave us some time to talk about it among ourselves and finally we decided to keep most of the stuff the same.  No one was very excited to talk with people so we decided against that. We also agreed we needed to quit wasting time and do our jobs instead of screwing around.  When we got done with the meeting we plotted our route for the next two days and got ready to leave. After the meeting we went over to the little taco shack by the truck.  We had the best quesadillas ever there!!  We also met a really cool guy there and we talked about some of the places he’s gone and about Hot Springs.  I thought it was kind of funny that after we decided against Thomsen's idea of talking to people we were all talking with this guy and some people were even taking notes.  After this chat and the food we had to hit the road and get ready for riding.  First we dropped off Ally then drove about ten miles to the park, where we regrouped.  We then dropped off Jeff and Sydney at the park and went to tell the others to stop at the park and wait for the truck to pick them up.  After this we went back to find Sydney and Jeff and rode with them.  As we rode with them we went up and down, and up and down, through hills, and more hills.  I felt so sorry for Sydney as she rode over 1,500 foot hills.  After about an hour and a half of this Sydney just couldn’t go on any further.  So Jeff kept going into town, which turned out to be around five miles away - all down hill, then the truck came and we went ahead to the town. We had a little snack and figured out what we were going to do about the next leg of the ride. Thomsen had started riding here and was riding to Booneville, so he'd already been out for over two hours.  Apparently he was chased by a wild turkey along the way but seemed ok when we picked him up.  Once we caught up to him we dropped Tyrone off.  Tyrone went for an hour and a half and approximately 22 miles, which got us to the motel we were staying at for the night.  All in all it was a very long day, and very hilly, but the weather was great and we made our mileage.  This bed is going to feel very good tonight.