No Chain: Magnolia, Arkansas

"...cause in the daylight anywhere feels like home"

- a lyric by Matt & Kim

Yesterday it took us right around 4 hours to ride 93 miles, today it took us right around 5 hours to ride 57 miles. No it wasn't hilly. No there wasn't a tremendous head wind. Today was just a day to appreciate the sights and sounds of rural Arkansas at a little slower pace. It's funny how the personality of the ride varies from day to day, somedays for the group it's put your head down riding with all of us working hard to get to our destination for the day only stopping for the designated water stops along the way. This kind of ride usually occurs when the mileage approaches 80-100 miles. Other days, like today, we end up riding as a much larger group stopping for anything that catches one of our eyes, this usually occurs after a high mileage day like we had yesterday. Some would argue that today is how you are supposed to ride across the country but I can definitely appreciate both sides of the argument. Somehow this morning in getting out of Texarkana, Texas through back streets to avoid traffic we missed the coveted state line sign of Arkansas but there are already plans in place to get that picture when we hit Tennessee in a couple of days, even if it means a little backtracking the wrong way down the road. The roads were more quiet today and the weather was perfect for riding with the sun shining bright and temperatures in the 70's. We really have had almost no weather problems so far and we're already half way across the country, pretty amazing although there is talk of storms this weekend. We all had a lot of fun stopping in a lot of the small towns along the way getting into some pretty random stuff and even took extended breaks (approaching 45 minutes) at the water stops for some dancing and photo ops. We stayed at another church, Presbyterian this time, where once again we were served a great dinner by their wednesday night small group. After a heart felt blessing by the pastor on our journey we broke for bible study which quickly turned into the largest game of kickball I've ever been apart of and probably my first game in the past 14 years. It was a lot of fun getting to know these amazing people on another more closer level than just giving our talk and heading for the next down. The whole night/day was a a lot of fun, Magnolia will definitely go down as one of my favorite stops. Can't wait till tomorrow when we get to do it all over again with another group of people in a new city. On to Arkadelphia, No Chain!

Whoever said booties without pants doesn't make you look tough has never met Libby and me.

Maggie got a new tat to celebrate the end of Texas.

New state #5!

My friend Katie is a strong rider. Today we had to wait 30 minutes at the first rest stop for her to get there which is completely unlike her. She pulled in bright red, covered in sweat and stated, "I'm just not feeling it today, I'm pedaling as hard as I can and can't break 13 miles per hour." We all felt pretty bad and figured the miles were just adding up and taking its toll....and then we looked at her bike and realized her brakes had been rubbing and her rear wheel hadn't correctly been locked into place the first 25 mile basically the equivalent of riding with the parking brake on. Her reaction was pretty priceless, and you probably had to be there to fully appreciate it but I don't think many of us had laughed that hard for a long time. Thanks Katie!