June 11th, 2008
We got a great start, but it was already 77 degrees and very high humidity when we left at 6:30 a.m. We got horribly lost in downtown Tallahassee, and ended up going an extra 5 miles in extremely steep terrain, and losing almost an hour. We were so glad to finally be out of town! After that, things went really, really well, and we made astonishing time. We ended up doing 30 miles, even after our early difficulties. We have now hit 334 miles!
We drove 6 hours back through Tallahassee to Tampa for the FREMA meeting. Tropical Storm Alberto was picking up, and the winds were a bit intimidating, especially with the bikes on the roof.
I was able to spend the entire 5 hour drive time on the laptop, much of it connected, thanks to our Verizon wireless card and access to larger metropolitan areas.
We met up with Evelyn in the evening, and picked up some “goodie” packages from her that people have been sending. Yippee! It felt like Christmas! We got the MonaVie gel from Ron and Barbara, and new Pearl Izumi cycling gloves and cycling Eurosocks from Mark Carrera at Peter Glenn of Vermont. We are pretty excited to have some “real” gloves, and we already know how great the socks are, as they are all we wear now anyway.