The Key(s) to Chattanooga

Today was a special day for the Rally team. After breakfast at Dean's house (the founder of the Rally Foundation) we went to Roswell Bicycles to begin our trip for the day. Terry Hampton and Marjorie Perry met us at the shop to ride with us. Terry was riding with us in memory of his son Coulter, who passed away in 2005, and Marjorie was riding for our Atlanta hero, Sean Dever. Frank with Roswell Bicycles was also there to help us all get started ...

(7:15 departure from Roswell)

In preparation for departure, Paul used the keys to the chase car to unlock the bikes from the bike rack and then he put them safely in the back pocket of his jersey. Then we happily mounted the bikes and headed out. Nicole (our chase car driver) stayed and visited with Frank for a few minutes while we pedaled deeper into the suburban wilderness of north Atlanta. A few minutes later, Frank was chasing us down to retrieve the keys from a particular biker's back pocket (special thanks, Paul) ...

We stopped in Fairmont to visit Terry's home and family, and to drop off Marjorie, who had the better sense not to continue to follow three crazy men who felt compelled to ride their bikes to a faraway land in another state ...

(having lunch with Terry's family)

Our total for today was 114 miles. The most important lesson we learned today was that bloodthirsty, man-eating dogs are scared of at least one thing: orange Gatorade. It stops them in their tracks and keeps them from eating innocent biker-fundraisers. (just squirt it in their eyes)

We arrived in Chattanooga before dark (a victory in and of itself) and feasted with Terry and his family at Chik-Fil-A. We feasted again at our Chattanooga host's home. We are about to feast one more time upon a plate of chocolate chip cookies that are among the best ever made The cookies were made by our Chattanooga host whose name is Georgia, which is also the name of the state we started our ride in today. Coincidence? Probably.

~ Austin and Paul