Ride day 3

Today was the second of our long days. Once again the sun was out and the weather was great. We have been spoiled this year with the weather. After speaking with several people along the route today that have done the ride for multiple years, this year is by far the best weather. Today was the day of the ride last year that was just miserable for us. We had temperatures that were probably in the mid 40s to low 50s and it rained in the afternoon. Kinda like home actually :-). So to be able to ride in sunny weather was great. We actually paid a little more attention to our surroundings rather than focusing on making it to the next rest stop and ultimately Annapolis.

Essentially today's ride took us through the city of Wilmington in Delaware and then out into the Maryland countryside. We spent most of the day riding through small towns and lots of pasture land. They are certainly in full swing of preparing for crops as the smell of manure was quite thick at times.

Here are a few pictures from lunch time.

And here is the ride marshal at work :-)











So after we left the lunch area we were tooling through the countryside when a helicopter appeared on the horizon. Shortly thereafter we realized it was a Maryland State Police chopper. Last year we briefly saw the chopper as we were coming into Annapolis. Today it hung around for little while before disappearing. At one point it hovered near the head of the pack for a bit while several bikes passed under. It was very neat to see them again this year and to hang around for so long.

The day ride ended with our arrival at a park just outside of Annapolis. Here we loaded our bikes on trucks and were bused into the city and to our hotels. After spending some time getting cleaned up Mark, John and me went downtown for dinner. We found Annapolis is a pretty neat city and wished that we would have a little more time to explore. It was nice to sit outside and have dinner and interesting to see the Naval Middies walking around in uniform. The campus to the academy is huge and parts of it border downtown. Here are a couple shots from the ride and a one from the academy, where it is very possible that one or more of the members from Seal Team Six attended that took care of business recently. And of course where many more leaders are being molded to do great things in the future.

Tomorrow brings our final leg of the journey and our arrival in DC. Again the weather is forecast to be great. We are very much looking forward to the ride into the city and to the Memorial again. We will also hopefully get to see Michelle tomorrow. She has been particpating in the challenge ride which takes a different route into DC from New Jersey. They began riding on Tuesday and will meet with us at RFK Stadium to ride to the Memorial. It will be good to see her and hear what she has to say about her ride.

We'll update you all tomorrow on our arrival. :-)