Up The Mountain

Today, rejoined by Kelly, we rode over 80 miles from Chattanooga to Tullahoma. Mrs. Bauman and Mrs. Hibbard were our two support drivers, because two is always better than one. On our way out of Chattanooga we encountered the Trail of Tears Remembrance Motorcycle Ride, which happened to be traveling on our route out of Chattanooga. Since cars are not motorcycles (though this is also true of bicycles), the law enforcement people were not going to allow our support cars to follow us if we rode with the motorcycles. This was a big problem and was going to require some major rerouting ...

(consulting with the guys at the local service station)

Luckily, the longest line of motorcycles that I have ever seen came to an end sooner than we thought and we were back on our way.

We three bikers rode several miles and took a quick breather at "Dixie Freeze," our unofficial base camp in South Pittsburgh, Tennessee, right before we began our ascent up the huge mountain that was to be our next leg of the trip. Amazingly, everyone made it to the top, one way or another, and no one got altitude sickness even though it felt as though we had just increased our altitude by about 8 billion feet.

Our stops along the way included the historic University of the South, also known as Sewanee (from which siblings of both Austin and Paul graduated), and the Polly Crockett Festival, a small-town arts festival that was taking place today in Cowan, Tennessee. We eventually ended our ride for the day in Tullahoma, which will be our starting point tomorrow. We then hopped in the cars and made our way back to the beautiful Adams Edgeworth Inn at the Assembly in Monteagle where the owner generously offered to house the Rally team. We then got a few more supplies in preparation of the final leg of the trip tomorrow, went out for some pizza and pasta at a new pizza joint in Sewanee called "Crust" (joined by Austin's brother's inlaws) and mentally prepared for the final day of biking.


~ Paul