Day 3 on the Road . . .

Yesterday we got off to a late start, since we were at the HEAL gala at TPC Sawgrass until late. It started off great, with the exception of my wheels breaking down far faster than they should. We were rolling along on Route 17 for a while, until we got near 95 and then the traffic got so bad we had to pull of the road for a bit. After that, we found Jekyll Island and skated the remainder of the 40 miles for yesterday. We learned our lesson; don't skate during rush hour in the afternoon. The view was great along the ocean while we were skating on Jekyll Island, but we were extremely tired from the first day that it took us a lot longer than anticipated, about an extra half hour of skating. We finally finished skating yesterday at about 8 o'clock and then drove to Brunswick, GA for the evening. We felt worn down and decided to get some pasta dinners (I had a shrimp salad) at Applebees in Brunswick before hitting the pillow to prepare for the next day at about 10.

Today we hit the pavement for another challenging day of skating. We let ourselves sleep in just a little bit, opting to start skating between 10 and 10:30 rather than 6 in the morning. I think that it was a good choice to let our bodied recharge a bit after the difficult skate we had yesterday evening. We had to drive about 30 miles to catch up to the point where we were yesterday, which was right in the beginning part of Darien, Georgia. The day began with Tatar, Strang, and myself hitting the road and letting Streich relax for the first bit. We cruised out to a nice pace (which I regretted about 17 miles into the trip today) and hit nothing but nice weather the entire way and little traffic. The cars that we did see along the way were honking and cheering when they drove past. I couldn't tell if they were honking because they were mad at us for skating on the road or because they were supporting us. Once I hit around 17 miles into the trip today, my legs kind of gave out and I had no energy left to continue and simply drove ahead and filmed the guys as they crossed the finish line; the team skated 30 miles today. Afterwards, we backtracked to Darien, GA (we passed it while skating) to check into the hotel. We had about 15 minutes to spare, so we decided to go across the street and eat at Smokey Joe's Bar-B-Q Shack. Tatar and Streich headed to the beach for the afternoon to relax and get some work done there, but Strang and myself opted to stay around the hotel and get some stuff done. We'll be sure to check in after tomorrow's skate.

Still Rolling,
Jason O.