Day 23
Welcome to my hood

Tuesday morning in Tuscaloosa was beginning to get busy at 7:00 when we packed up to leave...seems like Tuscaloosa is the busiest town in the country during rush hours, especially on highway 82 in front of our motel.  Life was good in Tuscaloosa, but we had another day of pedaling toward Savannah to accomplish.  I always like the early morning departures with the sun shining through the trees and glistening off the early morning dew that covers the hillsides.  It's always so fresh in the mornings...our legs sometimes aren't as fresh as we'd like them to by, but you have to enjoy the scenery as the sun rises before us in the east.

Today we rode to Barbara's and my hometown...Prattville, a small bedroom community of Montgomery, Alabama that is growing by leaps and bounds.  The population, the last time I checked, was approximately 40,000 and is home to one of the largest active Cotton Gin factories in the south...and we even have a WAL Mart and 3 Robert Trent Jones golf courses that I'll be spending time on when I get home next week.

We departed town through several residential areas to avoid the narrow highways that feed the sprawl.  The navigation was very precise and clear, but a bit complicated if you lost focus.  Last night Karen, Jim, and Barbara braved the darkness and laid down some directional arrows to help everyone get out of town.  Last time we didn't mark the route and at one point, Karen and Barb were parked along highway 11 and saw riders coming at them from all directions.  Barb was wondering how they could be so confused after only 5 miles and how could they be coming from so many different places?  Sort of a keystone cops routine...cheap entertainment for the van folks to say the least.  The markings worked and I didn't hear of anyone getting lost getting out of town.

After 13 miles of urban and residential riding, we turned out into the Alabama back country.  The road surfaces were mostly good...some were excellent and we had a time or two where it was a little rough.  Some of the roads out here are only hard top because they haul lumber out of the forest areas and they don't have to be silky smooth for logging trucks.  We had one section of freshly laid chip seal.  Luckily, they didn't extend the oil past where they were laying down the stone...that would have been a mess otherwise. 

Another challenge was the fact there is nothing out there...only a store or two along the way to supplement our vans.  We were pretty stretched with the terrain and the distance between the front and the back today.  After today's ride, we'll probably modify next years SAG spacing for support. 

As we entered Prattville, our route took us through where a tornado destroyed a housing area in the south part of town.  The storm was in late March, but the damage is still quite evident.  In one area, 20 or so houses are no longer there.

The hardest part of today for me was knowing I have to leave here tomorrow.  I'm home...I'd just as soon stay!  Barb and I went to the house to do laundry and drop off some clothes since we will be back in less than 5 days.  As we were leaving, we both had to make each other keep walking to the truck to go to the motel.  Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to bring the ride through here after all.  I heard someone say he fully expected to get 4 days of route rap and not see us again and some of the other riders were also taking bets as to whether we would come back or not.  I'll take that bet, but I won't tell you which side I'm on yet. 

Tomorrow, we depart for new adventures and a new state...Georgia, our last before getting to Savannah.  It should be a good ride if I can get them all out of bed in time to leave.  Actually, we are going to sleep in and not depart until 8:00 to allow traffic to thin out on our departure route.