Today we slept in a little more than usual. I woke up around 8:20 am, because of a pillow to the head. This was courtesy of Sydney . After getting dressed we packed up and got ready to leave the Marriott. We had coffee cakes for breakfast, which Jeff bought when he took Paul to the hospital this morning. Apparently he has some sort of infection. Anyway, we hit the road around 10:30 am, heading towards Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

Jeff, Sydney, Tim and myself started riding the first shift. We rode about twenty two miles in one and a half hours. While we were riding, Jeff taught us about streamlining, and so we began to learn about “drafting” the person in front of us.  That lasted about 5 minutes until Thomsen came up and made us all get off the bikes.  I'm not sure, but I think we got about a four and a half minute chewing out.  When we were training Thomsen kept telling us to stay at least 30 feet from the bike in front so if one guy went down the rider behind wouldn't hit him, and that seemed to make sense until we were told that drafting would make the riding easier.  That seemed to make a whole lot better sense, but Thomsen made it clear that we would maintain a safe distance or else we couldn't ride.  I don’t think democracy is going to enter into the picture on this trip.
 
The weather today was very strange. When we first started biking, it was cloudy, warm, and humid out. During the ride, the sun peeked out from behind the clouds, and at one point in time it began sprinkling. On my second ride, around 2:45 pm, the weather was all over the place! It was sunny almost all the ride, with very strong winds, then out of nowhere it starts hailing. Funny thing is, it was still warm when it started. Since it was hailing, we had stopped riding. We regrouped with the other bikers, and a few minutes later the sun was back.

After the regroup, Jeff, Sydney, Paul, Tim and I went ahead of the others to get a hotel in Tuscaloosa. I learned how to haggle with the hotel managers to get cheaper prices on the rooms. At one of the hotels, we were talking, and all of a sudden we heard tires screeching and the distant sounds of “bang, bang”. When we walked out to see what the commotion was, we saw a jeep with its window broken, and a black truck abandoned on the side of the road. The story was the one of the drivers got road rage, shot out the other driver’s back window, and abandoned their car. Thank you amendment 2 (right to bear arms)! After that, we got a hotel at a Super 8.