Murrs Across America

Jane is an “art artist”: she unwinds whilst wielding scissors; she finds solace in glue sticks. If there is a spot of paper (or her body) without color on it by the end of the day, she just feels off. She woke up with the need to do a craft on this morning.

Our second tire leak required surgery. While Stuart extracted a tiny, staple sized wire from my rear wheel, I took the kids down to the river to play at the beach. The kids are amazed that even the rivers have sand in Florida.

The day was uneventful if you don’t count the wind, which was exceptionally happening in the direction of our faces. We rode through the small town or Lee, “Small but Proud,” and on to Madison “Home of the Four Freedoms”, where dark clouds started happening, too.

We were down to our last diaper (after the Lightening McQueen Incident we had been liberal with their usage), so we stopped at the grocery store to restock. Prompted by the clouds, I decided to ask Mike, a man with his name on his shirt, where we might find a local hotel. Mike said there were a couple options four miles out of town, that we would never make it there before it stormed, and we should just throw our bikes in the back of his truck. We had more gear than he figured on for his short bed/ toolbox situation so we opted to load my bike and the two Burleys. Of course that left Stuart and his bike out in the rain for the not-four-but-six mile ride to the Super 8.

We dined at Denny’s on roughly 4000 calories each, and Stuart pointed out that he probably could have fit his bike in Mike’s truck after all. I did laundry at the hotel, and talked to Linda, en route to her home in Palm Beach with her moving truck. Later that night as I caught up on work and scarffed a chocolate chip Waffle House waffle, Linda kindly folded my laundry and chatted with Stuart, who had just stepped out to devour a large chocolate milkshake.

We ate like kings in Madison. And slept in beds.