4-02-08 Feel The Burn

Okay so remember how I slept in the first day.  Well this time we didn’t wake up because we didn’t hear the alarm!  Ouch.  So we were all scurrying about trying to get things packed away and loaded into the vehicles. Needless to say Thomsen wasn't very happy. Today we have an event in Raleigh and I forgot to call them yesterday to give them a heads up, so the people hosting the event didn’t even think we were coming! And to top that off, Tyrone was picked to give a speech about our project and he hasn't been practicing.  All in all, we really screwed this one up and it seemed like a lot of people weren’t that interested since they wouldn’t ask questions. Afterward Thomsen gathered us together for a real good chewing out, about a lot of things; for not getting good Alaska photos, for lolly-gagging this morning, and for not calling ahead of time to tell them that we were coming. It really ticked me off, mainly because I know he's right. Before we left for Columbia we took a quick photo with the bicycle cops and then headed over to the fire station for a photo with some firemen. Instead of leaving right away we were offered a tour of the fire station, which we all accepted. I had only been in a fire station once in my life, but this one was way cooler since it had fire poles. Learning about how everything worked was awesome and it was funny listening to the story about the chief that walked in his sleep. After our tour we headed out for Columbia. We drove out a ways and then stopped so that Justin and Jen could start riding. It was great watching them ride, and instead of staying in the Prius I got into the truck. It was really boring at first, but then Thomsen told me to pick a subject that I wanted to talk about and I was like what ?   But he kept on until we settled on the subject of sports and off we went talking about all sorts of stuff.  Nobody's ever made me talk in a car before and it was a little weird, but after a while it was cool, even though we covered a lot of subjects. The second and third shifts went out about an hour after we left and it felt really good to ride.  The weather was great and there was hardly any traffic and it seemed we were all making good time.  Thomsen went out on Jacob and my second shift and in the beginning just left us in the dust, but something hit him in the eye and he slowed down and I was bound and determined to catch him, which we did at the 22 mile mark, which was the end of our shift.   We loaded the bikes into the truck and headed into town.  Overall it was a good day even though Im a little tired from the riding, but so far this was one of my best days, not counting this morning.