June 7, 2004. Day 7.

This morning we woke up at the YMCA in Ardmore, OK to find rain and thunderstorms. This however did not dampen our spirits. We decided to wait the storm out for a couple of hours hoping it would pass. We dined on mounds of fruit and egg and cheese bagels provided for us by the lovely Denise at the YMCA and sat around practicing our presentations. Denise was awesome. She secured a police escort into town yesterday, bought us a ton of food, and even set up one of the Yoga instructors to come in and give us a quick session. The yoga was pretty neat actually, it really helped strech out my sore muscles and it was quite humerous seeing some of the guys trying to get into some of the positions. I even had a hard time, apparently I am not a very flexible person. But I can live with that.

A newstation man also came by and interviewed a couple of people. Since it was still raining he couldn't film us leaving so a couple of us rode back and forth in the street giving him some footage. Finally the thunder went away and we set off into the rain towards Norman, OK. The morning was pretty wet but we passed through the Arbuckle Mountains which were surprisingly beautiful. They were however quite small and before we knew it we were out of them. One of the riders Dan commented that if the Rockies were even twice as hard as the Arbuckle Mountains he'd be smooth sailing.

The rest of the day went pretty uneventful. We stopped at a bike shop to have lunch and were met by more wonderful and generous people and then after lunch the rain stopped and it was a nice overcast cool ride all the way in. We did see some pretty cool things though like a sign that said "Give a Hoot. Don't Pollute" and a huge statue of a spider made out of a VW bug. Not to mention all the armadillos on the side of the road. : (

Tonight we are staying at the Family Life Center and they set up great sandwiches and a lot of fruit. Martina, Mike, and I set out to explore the campus and decided to stop by the library and enter in our journals. Tonight we all clean our bikes and will have a tube patching party. I think our flat total today was around 13. Yikes!

Tomorrow shall be an easy 22 miles into Oklahoma City so to treat ourselves instead of our normal 5:45am wakeup call it has been pushed back to 8am!!! Yay! Since we will get in so soon we might also get to see a movie. (Fingers crossed for Harry Potter). So off I go to explore OU some more. Hopefully I will get to update again soon!

Thanks for reading!!!