It’s Hot, but the VFW was Cool!

Friday June, 4 2010 -Day 4 another 45 miles or so. We tried for an early start today since it was supposed to be hot. We still didn’t get off until 8. The weather report was correct - a beautiful sunny day – at 4:30 we saw a bank sign that said it was still  99 degrees. We are in a small town called Fowler. No Internet access so this will have to be posted later. In fact we may not find Internet until Sunday. Our campsite is the cheapest so far at @ $12. It is an RV Park, so to speak. I believe we put our tent up in his side yard. But there is some shade and a decent bathroom with a shower. We are at a point in our trip that we really have to go a long distance or a short distance to end up in a town with even a park to camp in. Tomorrow will be a city park with no showers, but I think we will have a bathroom available.Later in the evening we realized that we were only about 100 yds. from the train track.  Throughout the evening and night freight trains flew through the town with horns blaring.  From about 7:30 to 9:30 someone was practicing their drums in the neighborhood.  I thought maybe a garage band was going to practice, which would have been kind of neat.  But is turned out to only be drums practicing the same thing over and over.That probably won’t happen tomorrow. 

Getting back to today - As you can see it was hot, but as they say it was a dry heat. Hey it was still close to 100. We can’t fill too badly though we met two college age boys this afternoon. They are riding from Fresno, Ca. to Virginia Beach. Their “Hope” was for tailwinds. Hearing their stories of 90 mile days, mountains, and deserts – makes our trip a piece of cake. Tell that to my bottom side.

 

We stopped in Boone today. They are really used to having bicyclists stop by. We picked up a few things from the general store and then were told we should stop at the VFW. I just got my VFW Aux. Card so we stopped. One man was sitting at the bar drinking a beer at 10 in the morning. We found out that his wife was running the general store. He was quite the character. He and the bartender were really nice to us. We signed their guest book. They have had bikers from all over the world stop in. Hopefully, we will be able to hit a few more VFW’s on the way. The bartenders HOPE was for the Gulf to get cleaned up and the oil to stop.

We road on a two lane road most of today. Very little traffic, but what there was certainly had to be exceeding the 65 mph speed limit. For sites we saw some blooming cactus. Very pretty, but what we really wanted to see was some shade. We found some in a hay barn. We relaxed and cooled off there for about 15 minutes and that was the last shade we saw for about 2 hours.

As usual people are interested in what we are doing and offering support and wishes. We really enjoyed our time at the VFW. When we got to Fowler we stopped in a store to ask directions to the library. We thought they might have Internet access. One of the ladies offered to drive us to it. That was very nice, especially since when we got there it was closed.

So keep thinking about how you can Do Something For Others Today – something little can make a big difference for someone else.

By the way please ignore any grammatical errors, misspellings, etc. I am usually too beat to do much proofing and right now I am laying on my mattress trying to key this in.

6/6 /10 We are finally back to Internet availability tonight. I will blog a little more for the last to very interesting days later tonight. Stay tuned and as always – Do something for others today.

Jack and Mary Kay