RunAcrossTheUSA.com

[Matt]

Today was a busy day in the land of Matt and Brandon. We didn't get to bed until pretty late last night, and had to be up by 6 this morning to prepare for our Free Beer & Hot Wings radio show call-in at 6:30 Mountain Time. By the way, "preparing" means exercising every possible means of waking ourselves up so that we don't sound like complete zombies during our interview.

The interview went well, and afterwards we got some continental breakfast before attempting to replace our tires and tubes with the No-Mor Flat tubes and new tires that my parents had brought. We won't go into all the details, but an hour and a broken tire later we were off in search of a bike shop at about 9 A.M. Sadly, the first two bike shops we tried didn't open until 10. However, on our third attempt we were able to find an open shop, Gillette Bicycle Shop. The people there were very accomodating, and we were able to purchase a new tire and get all the tubes and tires installed for a nominal fee.

Since we already had the stroller out and the contents mostly removed, we decided to also use this time for our monthly complete clean-out of the stroller. This is always an adventure, because things collect at the bottom that you had almost forgotten, and some things that you don't remember at all. This time we pulled out two paper bag's worth of goods; one bag of trash and one bag of mementos.

After grabbing some Powerades, my parents drove us back out to the mile mark we had stopped at the night before. It was nearly noon when we started, but we tried to make up for it by not stopping during the day. Brandon and I only had two voluntary (more on this in a second!) stops during the entire day, a bathroom break and a break to eat.

After our final break we were pushing hard, trying to get as far as we good before the 8 P.M. pick-up time that we had agreed upon with my parents. However, we ran into some legal trouble when a police officer pulled over and got out of his vehicle.

According to the officer, someone had called in a report that a woman was running down the interstate with a stroller, away from a man that was chasing her. Since I was pushing the stroller, apparently I was the female. How anyone could mistake a 6'3" 180 pound man with no shirt on for a female is beyond me, but I guess that I would make a pretty cute girl...

Anyways another officer pulled up (maybe the first thought he needed backup?) and we talked with them for a while, and also got a picture. Brandon asked to be handcuffed for the picture, but they said no.

After that it wasn't much longer until my parents picked us up. We got our 30 miles in today, not bad for starting at noon. Tomorrow we're hoping to start about 8, so hopefully we'll be able to get a little more time with my parents tomorrow night. Still, it was great to get so many things done today, and we were able to have some good time with them tonight at Wal-Mart and Perkins, especially making fun of my dad for ordering off the "55 and older" menu.

Well, I'm sorry if this post lacks the usual wit and good grammar that you've come to expect from RunAcrossTheUSA.com, but I have to go take an online college math test at 11 at night. The fun just never stops when you're running across the country!