Again, if you follow me on instagram or twitter you saw what we ran into and I promise we'll get to that in a minute (my tag on both is lwmelikian for those of you that have been asking). We first woke up this morning ready to embark on our 94 mile day to our next site, which isn't as terrible as it sounds. About 15 miles in we realized about half the roads we needed to be on weren't marked well or were covered in gravel so we had to result to making our own route. The only problem with that is we don't have distances in roads so we have no clue how far anything is and about 65 miles in (7 hours from having breakfast) we finally arrived in a town where we could take a break and refill on liquids (which was good because we had been dry about the last 15 miles). Up this point the first 50 miles had been fairly easy filled with rolling hills, a stop to pet a horse, and tons of shade and cool weather. The last 15 was filled with being passed by tanks, drained by heat, and a "Caution Tank Crossing" sign.
By the time we got to Hardees to break and refuel we checked the rest of the make shift map and it was another 56 miles to our campsite. For those of you that don't do math well that's 120 mile day...on day 3. When we checked the radar we also saw that a huge storm filled with tornado warnings, hail, and pouring rain was coming in hot. Cameron (being the responsible rider) helped Davis organize the trailer, while Evan and I grabbed the GoPro and headed toward the storm...only because it was in the way of our site and we weren't getting off our bikes till we had to. After eating and refilling on water and Powerade we were off and had a rude awakening waiting for us about 7 or 8 miles in (This puts us above 70 miles just as a side note). If you follow me on instagram you saw the picture I posted of the darkest most intimidating group of clouds I'd ever seen. I kindly sent that picture to my girlfriend in which case she continued to yell at me via text message and call me by my full name for taking that risk...and that was before the storm actually hit us. After calling Davis and Cameron to meet us at the intersection because Evan could see funnel clouds all hell broke loose. I wanted to keep going toward the storm (strictly for a great video opportunity) while Evan talked me into waiting. At about that point winds upwards of 50 mph (rough guess by Evan Hibbs) came in and took us off our feet. I immediately went into survivor mode realize the storm was coming in faster than our support vehicle and through my bike on my back and ran into the ditch as fast as I could. Then I realized Evan had taken off down the road without me on his bike. Preparing my heart to meet Jesus a lot sooner than I expected I could hear the power lines snapping and going down around us as I got back on my bike and followed Evan about a mile down a trail (with trees falling down behind us) toward a log cabin...where we met a nice stranger.
Parents this is where you stop letting your kids read because you're busy teaching them to not talk to strangers, but to be fair life was taking precedence over stranger danger. A 62 year old ex NFL player who went to the University of Tennessee was kind of enough to open his home (with no power) to us and offer us food and water while we waiting for our truck to show up. Honestly, the whole time I was waiting for him to come out of the bedroom with a sawed off shotgun and end us right there, but it never happened. Actually, the whole time we were on the phone with Davis and Cameron he was on the phone letting people know he had some crazy boys from Texas in his house riding across the country. After a good half hour we were finally able to meet out at the main road with Davis and Cameron so we could get to our site safely. Yes, I said safely.
Tomorrow we have 77 miles ahead of us hopefully full of good directions and no storms. Even so it'll end up being a pretty cool story and hopefully I wasn't dumb and turned the GoPro off so you can see how it all went down. O, and don't worry, I already made a promise to someone I wouldn't try that again, so Dad you don't have to text me. G'night.
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