Five States Down

McAlester to Ft Smith AR. 1900' of climbing. Temp in the mid 50's. We have a 8:00 am leaving time after the shock of the previous days news. Since we are leaving so late and we are into the established routine almost everybody is ready to go early. A small catch is the weather. It's raining and worse weather is comming. Even though it is way after sunrise it is dark and gloomy out. Pat, James and I head out on to the rain soaked streets. We are to exit the road we start on to Rt 270 East and we all do except one. Who is now headed to Canada. Luckily he knew something was a miss when he didn't come to the first town on the cue sheet. One of the vans goes to pick him up. Others are having flat trouble early on. The morning will be a mess from any way you look at it. James gets a flat just as the thunderstorms hit. We take shelter in a car port type structure next to a mobile home. In and around the car port are 2 tractors and 2 wrecked cars. Pat and James are expecting someone to come out of the trailer any minute with a shotgun. I think in this weather no one is going outside unless they have to. We are there about thirty minutes. The storm has been moving fast and is pulling off to the east. Back on the road and we start to warm up. Pat gets 2 flats at once. Cold again. At the Sag it stops raining but I am still cold. Karen is kind enough the open the back of the trailer with the luggage and my duffle is right there as I was one of the last to load. I get my jacket out. As we are leaving Chris rides up and we stop to talk for a minute. We exchange flat stories and Chris says you better get moving Norman's freezing. On the road James gets another flat. Then a while later I get my turn. With a piece of glass finally getting through. The thorn proof tube I am using is so thick I can't put it in my seat bag and have to wear it. I give the tube to Karen to hold onto till we get in. She finds a piece of wire in the tube but at a later inspection this is not through the tube. Before we leave Barbara tells us of another change to the end of the route getting into the motel extending the days ride even further. A navigational error then adds another 2 miles to the day. Some where about 80 miles my climbing legs disappear. I'm OK on the flat but every time we head up a hill I'm just FLAT. Pat and James nurse me along till the last 10 miles when I have to go to the front being as I had the only viable copy of the cue sheet left. The route from the original motel to the replacement was torture for me as today's ride couldn't end soon enough. We had route rap at 7:00 pm for Thursday's ride. The last four riders came in just as we were finishing up. A tough day all around. Tomorrow we get 2 new riders to go to Savannah. We just keep rolling along.