Hello, all.

It has been the most exciting two days of the trip. To be honest, I don’t remember everything, but one event sticks out in my mind…

A couple of nights ago we were in Dublin, GA. There were four leaf clovers everywhere and the high school team was the Fighting Irish. It’s an interesting town with lots of old houses and at least one half of town has a good feel to it. Unfortunately, when we had to go to the laundromat we were sent to the not so good feeling part of town. We’ll skip the boring part about the laundry detergent and folding clothes and get to the good part.

I had just put up our laundry basket and was walking out of the laundromat. There was a pit bull in my way and I walked around him saying, “bye sugar” as I walked by (that was the dog’s name, by the way). Seconds after I walked past I felt something grabbing my right calf. I looked back and saw the dog and looked down at my leg and realized he had bitten me. I screamed at the dog and then at the dog’s drunk owner. I rampaged across the street to the liquor store (and on the way there met the dog again… I threatened to kill him and he ran away. Haha.) and called the police. I went back to the coin laundry and started fixing my leg with our first aid kit. As I put peroxide on my leg the drunk guy tried to talk to me, but I was still pretty mad and told him to leave me alone for now. The police arrived a few minutes later and we explained what happened…

It was pretty late at night. Around 9:30 maybe. It was dark and we were in a really bad part of town, but I knew I needed to go to the hospital to get a shot. We had gotten directions from the officer and headed that way. I guess the dark made it hard to follow directions because we ended up lost on a street with absolutely no light being yelled at by a really scary guy. We went to the police department and got new directions and around 11 got to the emergency room.

When we got in there they cleaned up my leg and gave me a tetanus shot. They also told me that if I had rabies I had to get a series of shots. We won’t know for another nine days if he had rabies or not, so keep your fingers crossed for us! When we were in the emergency room I asked the doctor, “if I have rabies I’m not gonna go old Yeller on my girlfriend, am I?” I have yet to froth at the mouth or get lockjaw… so far so good!

We left the ER around 12:30 that morning and rode in the dark to the other side of town, the good part, and stayed at the Bible Church. We set up our stuff and settled in until that morning when Colby, the pastor, came upon us. He was pretty shocked, but after we explained the situation he helped us out quite a bit. Before we left he prayed with us. Thanks, Colby, for everything you did for us!

Yesterday, we rode a whoppin’ 58 miles. It was our longest day by far. It was pretty hot when we finally got on the road because we had to stop in several places, like the court, the police department, and we also had to make some calls. The ride was good though. I can tell from the landscape that we’re in southern Georgia now. There was one place we rode by that looked like an old plantation. It had a big fence around it and, on the surrounding property, there were hundreds of trees. It was gorgeous.

The reason this entry has that name is because of a funny failed dog attack. We were chased by something like 15 or 20 dogs through the course of the day. One of them was in a small town (Glenwood, I think). There were a few kids in the yard and their big lab started chasing us. I reached for the pepper spray, preparing for the worst and still nervous from the night before, and heard one of the kids yell at the barking beast, “shut up, you big dummy!” Caitlin and I nearly fell off the bikes laughing. We made it through Glenwood without getting bit.

We arrived in Lumber City, which was supposed to be our final destination, at around 8 PM. We went to the store and bought some candy. We were going to camp out at the church there, but it was in the open and I knew the cops would be called on us, so we rode out to the next town.

The sunset was beautiful, but it also told us it would be getting dark soon. I thought we could make it to Hazlehurst before we ran out of light, but we didn’t make it. Caitlin was nervous because she couldn’t see the road and I was nervous because I didn’t know if the cars could see us (even though we have lights on the backs of our bikes). We finally reached Hazlehurst around nine and started searching for a place to camp. There was nothing. We decided to stay at the Best Western.

Over the last few days we’ve done nearly 180 miles. We’re pushing harder than ever so we can meet our friends in Jacksonville, FL. Our legs are finally in shape! Even though we’ve been going further than we were before our legs haven’t been bothering us. Tonight we expect to make it to Waycross.

Thank you, everyone, for reading the blog! Keep us on your minds and in your prayers.

May your legs be speedier than the dog that wants to eat them! Thanks again!