RunAcrossTheUSA.com

[Matt]

Now the business part is over, time to tell the tale of today!

Well, last night was probably the roughest we've had so far. As Brandon so eloquently put it, I got to bed early to get my "beauty sleep." It was a beautiful evening, as I drifted off to sleep to the sound of a gently breeze against the tent.

I awoke as Brandon returned to the tent, and a storm was raging. We were both a little concerned, as it felt like the tent was going to blow away or collapse. Still, we like the adventure and drifted off to sleep. The next time I awoke our tent was flooded. What happened was the rain water got trapped under our tent in between the tarp that we lay underneath it and the tent floor. The result can best be described as an extremely leaky water bed. Mostly everything got soaked, and the tent, our clothes, and our sleeping bags smell terrible.

With that nightmarish night behind us, and knowing that my parents and a couple of warm beds awaited us that night, we packed up, said goodbye to the nice two women that we stayed with, and hit the road. It was wet for most of the morning, and we only stopped once at a McDonald's for some breakfast. I tried the Fruit and Walnut Salad, it was pretty good, although Brandon made fun of me for the rest of the day. I guess it isn't nearly as manly as the Deluxe Breakfast, but it tasted good to me!

Knowing that we were going to get pampered kept us going strong throughout the day, and we only stopped once at a gas station to rest for a short while and eat a little snack. We passed through Greenville and hit the Ohio cornfields, powerwalking along into Indiana, totaling 36.6 miles by 6 o' clock. My parents picked us up and we ate dinner at a nice restaurant, where Brandon and I ate like it was our last meal. Then came our return to the hotel, where we were able to examine and play with all of our new "toys!" I am pleased to announce that the Ogo works great, and our new socks should be great replacements for all the pairs that we fried. My mom is even washing our stinky clothes for us tomorrow, which is a big deal for us since it saves us a couple hours of daylight.

So it's pretty amazing to both of us to see how this RunAcrossTheUSA website has simply grown and snowballed. Tony Cappaert reworked it for us and it looks a million times better than what I had done.

I'm getting pretty tired (as always!) and we're still trying to hit our average mileage of 36 tomorrow, so that's all for now. Hopefully we'll be able to keep writing from the road, so stay tuned!