Day 17- Recovery Day
September 26th, 2006Today the sunshine held ONCE again and we had a pleasant recovery ride along an 87 mile, 3700 ft climbing route into Arkadelphia, Arkansas. We spent most of the day easy pacelining in a group of about 6-15 riders. The morning started in the typical 48 degree cool weather, enough to wear arm warmers and vest which were shed by lunch time. Our first sag stop took us into the huge town of Big Fork, Arkansas with its 250 families, 4 churches, and 1 mall. We stopped at the country mall and you can see from the photos that this is the place to be for the residents of this town. We learned that the Ouachita mountains are the only range that runs east-west in the continental US and we rode through them!
Our last 20 miles were on back roads which reminded me of our Rhode Island rides and I took the opportunity to invite my fellow riders to lil’ Rhody for some really nice road riding like this spot in Arkansas. The smooth winding road also gave me a chance to photograph some of my riding companions with ‘action riding shots’. We got into our hotel about 2pm and we have fast food Mexican, Subway, Taco Bell, or Cracker Barrell for dinner. I think I’m going light with a walk to Subway. We are quickly developing a post-ride tradition by stopping for a milk shake- either McDonalds, Dairy Queen, or Baskin-Robbins. Below you see a photo of Butch and me sipping our post-ride shake. Tomorrow we’re off to our last stop in Arkansas and then onto Mississippi…
Big Fork Mall, Arkansas with owner and customer.
From left to right: 1. Paul, a veterinarian from Wisconsin and Greg, an architect from Pennsylvania 2. Gary from Wisconsin 3. Butch from Wisconsin 4. Larry, famous finance textbook author from California 5. Anne from New York and 6. Walt- Team RAAM veteran (also, Larry is a team RAAM veteran).
Butch and I having what has become our traditional post-ride milk shakes!