Day 47

It is currently 11:27 Texas time, lets see if I can't get this blog over and out while its still Day 47.

First of all I'd like to start off with something that should have made it in yesterday's blog. Minutes after meeting Brent's kids we learned they loved Star Wars! Even more incredible, his 4 year old daughter was able to quote Han Solo! She was a little shy at first, but it only took a minute for her to show us her impression of "Laugh it up fur ball!". I was really impressed, most little kids just know about light sabers and Darth Vader, but this girl quoted Solo! His son Logan is also very into Lego Star Wars, these kids are great!

Anyways onto today. We got back going right were we left off yesterday. It was a very dark, cold, windy, rainy morning. We worked on getting some supplies and putting the jogger together before making our way out into the storm. Of course on days like this everything goes wrong. Somehow Andy managed to muscle the jogger a bit too much, and we had to do some quick surgery. After that we got on our way down 380. At the start of the day there was no shoulder, lots of rain, and no visibility. It was pretty scary and tough to get going, so I decided to get the guys motivated. I gave them a speech that would have made King Leonidas proud. We were up against two strong forces, the forces of nature beating down on us from the skies, and the force of unyielding economic development in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. There were consumers EVERYWHERE! But all the commerce and all the rain was no match for us! Andy and I agreed that some times you just gotta "Man Up". We were like salmon swimming up stream, as there was a strong flow of water running down the little shoulder we had. There was no choice but to push on. Early on in the run we were stopped by a police officer who actually put his lights on to stop us (a first for the trip). There had been reports of men running with a baby in the storm and he was coming to check us out. He warned us that we were on a very dangerous road and we should get off it immediately. We couldn't really tell if it was a warning or an order, so we pushed on. About 8 miles into it the rain was coming down really hard, and we were surrounded by lightning. We decided to pull into the Wal-Mart, and try to wait out the storm for a while. The folks in the Gardening Center were more than welcoming to us, and let us take over a small portion of concrete.

We waited around for about 40 minutes and made up a game plan. We figured we'd try to get another 8-12 in on the day, cutting it short by about 10. This works out however since we have a 19 mile day planned for two days from now which we'll just switch out.

We kept rolling, and eventually met up with Dan, a reporter from the Dallas area. We couldn't believe this guy was out in the storm! You'd have to be crazy to put yourself out into weather like this! All jokes aside, this dude was out there in business clothes, nice pants and a tie, not exactly waterproof gear. We talked to him and agreed to meet up at a diner about 5 miles down the road. We spent the rest of the day literally getting blown over by the wind, and talking about how hard Dan was for being out here. I'm going to make it a point to e-mail his supervisors and make sure he gets a raise for his incredible passion for journalism. We saw Dan across from what we thought was the diner we were stopping at, but after stopping and asking him we found it was about a quarter of a mile up the road. This got us all pretty excited. We started singing all sorts of upbeat songs, culminating in Diddy singing the "Mana-Mana" song from The Muppets. Words can't explain how into it he was, it was a beautiful moment. We were laughing, singing and dancing in the pouring rain, when Andy decided "I'm wet enough, I might as well dive into that ditch!". Sure enough, Andy ran and slid into a small stream created by the rain Crocodile-Mile-Style. Ken and I erupted into laughter since it was absolutely insane, and no one encouraged him to do it, he did it for him. We eventually met up with Dan at Joey's Cafe, a delicious Italian spot where we talked for about an hour about the trip. Dan was very interested in the trip. You can definitely tell when a reporter is interested in the story, or just going through the motions.

After lunch Elyse picked us up and brought us back to some dry clothes and warm showers. We all got organized and relaxed, and met back up with Brent to get in some quick hot tub action at a local health club. We all really enjoyed the hot tub after a long day in the cold rain.

After the hot tub it was time for the main event, dinner! I say the main event because I've been personally looking forward to this moment for the last few days. Kaitlyn (Andy's girlfriend) has been planning for over a month to come out today and surprise visit Andy! Its been quite an adventure keeping this secret from Andy. Ken and I developed a game where we would stand about 5-10 feet from Andy and would see who could say "Kaitlyn is coming to visit in a few days" the loudest without him hearing us, I got pretty risky with it. We went to a Tex-Mex restaurant and took a seat. After about five minutes Kaitlyn laid the classic come from behind hand over the eyes "guess who" move on Diddy. He immediatly smiled and said "Thats why you haven't been answering your phone today!?". It was a really cool moment, I've been really excited for both of them the last few days.

Due to a complex combination of Kaitlyn's visit, and a slew of personal reasons we've decided to take tomorrow off so we can really enjoy this area with Kaitlyn and her family. Its an unscheduled day off, but hey we deserve it! Besides, we banked one up back in Mississippi, so we're still on schedule for our May 26th dance in San Diego!!

Happy Birthday Peggy!!
Love,
Durkin

Edit: I finished this post at 11:59 I swear! pay no attention to Blogger's flawed timing system.