Huntington, W. VA

Rain, rain, rain that’s what it did all day today and we enjoyed every minute of it. Today began a lot like yesterday with %90 chance of rain for the early half of the day and it managed to stop just as we arrived in Huntington. I was soaked for the better half of the day with my fingers pruned and wrinkled for the rest of.

The rain really made the miles fly by and before we knew it our paceline had put 42 miles behind us and were asking for lunch to be at lodging where it would be dry. The rest of the ride went by in a blur of water in my face from the man’s tire in front of me. I didn’t have to drink much today as most of my water intake came from the road and as one of the guys on the team put it “the road tastes pretty good today, I’m actually not even that hungry for lunch since I’ve been eating road debris all morning."

Only one more state line to cross!
PHOTOS TO COME SOON

We arrived in Huntington around 1:30 and were happy to hear that we were staying the Holiday Inn tonight and would have warm showers and beds after a day of being soaked. My first action of business before evening showering and getting out of my soaking wet clothes was to head to the Verizon store right next to hotel to pick up a new phone since the trip consumed another one of my personal items, this time it being a broken screen on the phone. After squaring away my means of contact to the outside world and making my daily errands finding a Starbucks and bike shop I warmed up and enjoyed the amenities of a nice hotel.

The team spent the evening at Mountain State center for Independent living which assists individual with disabilities in many ways including job partnering programs, city accessibility issues, and obviously assisted living funding. We enjoyed a wonderful catered Famous Dave’s BBQ dinner and meeting some of the amazing clients and employees from Mountain State.
We rounded the evening out with a trip to Coldstone Creamery and a $3 movie theater showing “Pelham 123” with Denzel Washing and John Travolta, how could you go wrong with those two? The movie was awesome and I’m so excited to be approaching the hometown of Blacksburg and the intimidating ride that awaits us from Beckley to Blacksburg!