Best of the Best

Now that Jessica and I have been training for this bike ride for over two months, we are to the point where we are doing long rides that are high risk and high reward. Finishing our 32 mile ride this past Sunday (Easter) felt great but was certainly met with our fair share of interesting occurrences.

Until last week (Sunday, March 5th) we had not yet had any real snafus as it relates to our training. Jessica did fall in Kingston Pike, which could have been real bad, but she was a trooper and got up, dusted her shoulders off, and kept on burning up the pavement. The snafu on 4/5 came when the backpack that I was carrying for our 25 mile ride that day suddenly drenched my back. My fears were confirmed when I stopped, opened up the bag, and found two inches of Gatorade saturating a silver, perfectly functioning Blackberry. This wasn't my first encounter with moisture and cell phones but the crazy thing was that as I stuck my hand into the puddle of lemon-lime electrolytes I realized that although dead, the blackberry was seizing, or vibrating, as it may have been. I took the battery out, dumped the Gatorade out, and kept pedaling...no time to sweat the small stuff!

This Sunday, however, we encountered "Lover's Lane," the Little River Railroad Museum, and even a snake being attacked by vultures on our scenic tour of Townsend, TN. We were also able to enjoy two swinging bridges and also encountered nice tourists from south Alabama. Ahh, the great American vacationers of the Great Smokey Mountains!

Our rides are getting longer just in time for the warmer temperatures of spring in the south. However, Jessica and I both are continuing to build up our endurance, find our cadence with our bikes, and learn what it means to stay hydrated and full of plenty of carbs during each and every outing. We're learning more about the sport of cycling everyday.

One Final Note: We are proud to announce that we have already sold 57 tickets to our Happy Hour 4 a Cure event. Today we secured Taylor Corum as our acoustic performer to start the evening and the Dirty Guv'nahs are looking forward to their first show in Knoxville since their big CD release party at the Bijou downtown last week. Buy your tickets today!