Day 52

Happy Easter!! Today has been an excellent day so far.

We got picked up by Amy, a women we were put in touch with by our old friend Tommy Lewis from Paris. Amy brought us back to the spot where we finished up yesterday and we got on our way. We really appreciated Amy going through the trouble of picking us up on a holiday but she assured us it was her pleasure.

We got moving real early on in the day at a real good pace. The forecast called for rain so we wanted to get in as much as we could before it came. We flew through the first 12 miles in about 2 hours and stopped for a quick bite at a Dairy Queen. I'm pretty sure I got the best burger out of the three of us, The Hunger Buster w/cheese. We talked with the employees of The DQ for a while about our run and the town and eventually got back on the road. One of them graciously donated a few dollars to our fund to help along the way.

After being on the road for a little bit we came up with the idea to call everyone who has helped us out along the way. We broke out our book of names and started going to work. It was a pretty great experience, each name brought back amazing memories. We talked about how each time we talked to someone it felt like we had JUST left them, even though a lot of them were from Georgia and Alabama, which is surprisingly over a month ago! We hadn't talked to many friends since we'd left some, so it was really nice getting back in touch with them. A lot of people told us they had been keeping up with our updates every day and still have us in their prayers. Getting back in touch with our friends from the south really helped the run go by quickly.

Andy and I always say the days where we don't have anything to write about in terms of running are the best. No one was hurting, no one was hot, no cars almost hit us, and there wasn't anything shiny or interesting on the side of the road to distract us. We ended the day around 2pm and got picked back up by Amy on the western side of New Castle (our planned stop for the night). She brought us back to Graham and to a delicious Easter dinner at What-A-Burger. We all went with the Triple Burger
meal, this thing was massive! I looked it up online and it was somewhere around 1100 calories, add bacon, fries and a large Dr. Pepper and we're talking some serious re-fueling! These were probably some of the largest burgers any of us had ever handled, but we all put them away no problem. I told my brother Mike about this Easter meal and it reminded us both about the Easter our car broke down on the way to our grandparents. We didn't have anything planned for dinner at our house, so we ended up going with a hearty meal from Burger King. It was unfortunate that we didn't get to see our family, but fortunately for us it was the year the Easter Bunny brought us Mario Bros. 3, or as Mike and I simultaneously put it "The Best Easter Ever". Also, on the subject of putting away food I have to call Andy out for what he said yesterday. He commented on Ken and I not finishing our meals and him being a champ and dominating his. What he didn't tell you was our plates were unusually large and his was of regular (if not small) size.

For the rest of the day we'll work on getting up more pictures and updates, watching Richie Rich and College Hoops, and probably eating some more before getting to bed early.

Happy Easter,
-Durkin!!