Greenville, SC to Norcross, GA

Well...Since my last update we've done quite a few things.

First off was our day off in Greenville, SC. We met with the people at Hincapie Sportswear, who manufactures our jerseys and shorts and other apparel. They were some really cool guys and were excited to hear about our trip. It's great to have support from an organization like that. George wasn't there but his brother Rich was. After that a few of us stopped by the Art Museum where they had a pretty sweet Andrew Wyeth show up. I was glad to get an art fix. That night we had an awesome pizza dinner provided to us by Bill West, one of our the board members for Bike and Build.

We shoved off the next day with beautiful weather and an amazing ride. Of all the riding days so far, I think the ride into Hartwell, GA has been my favorite. Every day has been great but this day was especially nice. Mainly, we crossed our first state line into Georgia. It's pretty crazy to think that we just biked across an entire state, even though we have about another dozen or so to go. This combined with awesome weather made this day just wonderful. Our host was amazing in Hartwell. An amazing dinner and just very excited to be helping us out.

We left bright and early the next morning to head to Athens where we would spend a day doing a build with Habitat. The last 5-10 miles of this day were very steep to say the least. We hit a lot of hills but I actually enjoyed them quite a bit. Our hosts at Holy Cross Lutheran Church were absolutely amazing. They fed us two dinners and two breakfasts, all of which were fit for kings. I met a lovely lady who I spent all of dinner conversing with about the trip and everything else that came up. It's always amazing to meet people like this. It definitely gives us the extra fuel and desire to pedal with enthusiasm.

And all this leads me to today...a long, hot and hilly ride. It was crazy humid out today which totally zapped my energy pretty early. I can definitely tell I'm getting stronger and more comfortable riding long distances, but sometimes it just hurts. Preston and I managed to make it to the lunch stop with no real problem. Hung out at lunch for a bit and got right back on the road. The last leg of the day consisted of 2+ mile detour through the gnarliest hills we've seen yet. Definitely a humbling experience when earlier in the day I felt great about my abilities. Definitely a slower last half of the day, but made it unscathed. Dinner tonight was provided by a local church who organized with an executive chef to cook some down home southern bar-b-que, brisket and some eggplant parmesan. Simply put, an amazing meal...and he just kept making it as long as we kept eating it. We have definitely been spoiled thus far by hosts.

I'm trying ot do better about taking more pictures and getting a lot posted. Right now all of the pictures are on my Facebook. We started an online gallery and are just dumping all of our images onto it. So you can visit http://picasaweb.google.com/sc2sc10 to check out everyones pictures.

Hope this update serves you well.

-David