July 29.
After all these days bicycling across the US, we have only had a handful of rainy days. One ascending into Lake Tahoe on which we experienced rain, and sleet, and snow–and even a bit of hail…one just a short time later traveling to Lovelock, NV. I got caught in some rain some afternoon traveling through Mississippi but most people (except the sweeps behind me) got in early enough to miss it. There was no chance of missing the rain on this day. We can’t complain though. It’s amazing that we have had so few rainy days.
Henry tried to help us avoid some of the worst of the rain by postponing our start. And when we did set out, it wasn’t raining very hard. We had plans to get through Plains Georgia by a certain time so that we could get to Americus by about 11:45. When I arrived in Plains, it was pretty much time to leave. I shared a peanut butter ice cream with a friend and stopped to use the restroom and then it was time to go. By the time we left Plains, it was raining really hard.
We rode to a gas station just outside Americus and met up with our police escort to the Fuller Center. Because we were able to practice in Tuskegee, we did pretty well with this police escort. I heard Henry tell the officer to stay at around 12 mph and slower uphill and we would all be able to stick together. I wasn’t expecting much of a reception other than that, but when we reached the Fuller Center headquarters, there was a crowd of people there cheering us on and welcoming us like heroes!
Then we went in, all soaking wet, to the air conditioned building, to have sandwiches and watermelon and cookies. All of us refused to sit down when we were invited because we knew we would get the furniture soaking wet, too. Eventually we had done enough celebrating and headed off to the Presbyterian church where we were to spend the next several days. There was one shower in the church, and several of us also went to Georgia Southwest, a university in Americus, to take a shower. We got clean, warm and dry and were ready for our evening activities–a dinner prepared by the Mennonite church in town.
