Georgia's on My Mind

State Number 2, we made it! Let's recap. On Tuesday, we drove a ways north of Gainesville to a lovely small town called White Springs to meet with mayor Helen Miller. As the home base for the Suwannee Bicycle Association and take-off point for many bike tours in Florida, White Springs is doing a great job to promote bicycling. From there, we were joined by Bob Newman of the Gainesville Cycling Club for the day's ride to Jacksonville.

RASR with mayor Helen Miller and Bob Newman in White Springs.

When we made it to Jacksonville, we were greeted by Valerie Feinberg and April Seliga, among many other Jacksonville bike enthusiasts. Jenny Kubicki represented the Jacksonville Bike Coalition at this awesome local event at the San Marco Preservation Hall. The event was designed to promote Safe Routes to School (one of the major organizations we're fundraising for) as well as general public health of the community. Three city council members, Don Redman (an avid triathlete who also joined us on the bike train in the morning), Lori Boyer, and Bill Bishop were present at the event and the mayor of Jacksonville wrote a proclamation in our honor! He declared February 16th regional bike and walk to school day, which we were able to participate in the next morning as we joined some middle-schoolers as they rode to Landon Middle School. Before the ride to school, we all met at Open Road Bicycles for a spot on the local morning news!

City Councilwoman Lori Boyer reading the Mayor's proclamation

Landon Middle School

After our big TV and bike train debut, we treated ourselves to a delicious breakfast at Metro Diner. We were all super well-rested from our night in Jacksonville because of our wonderful hosts the Morenos.

Can you tell how satisfied Jane is?

And then we finally got to meet up with Darlene, who will be with us for 10 days! Another honorary member to the team.

Welcome Darlene!

Right after Darlene tagged on to our group, we met up with Terry, John, SPAM, and Jenny from the Camden Bike Center riding group, based out of St. Marys, GA. They toured us through their favorite sites, cycling roads, and SRTS-supported schools!

New tradition: Maori faces at each state border! Hasta la vista, Florida.

Darlene had many firsts after she joined us. Above: first time over the Sydney-Lanier Bridge!

Thanks for a fun day of cycling, Camden Bike Center riders.

Darlene hosted us at her lovely home/clinic (Harris Neck Massage Clinic), right near South Newport. Thanks to Ken and Joy as well for putting up with all us crazy cyclists!

Darlene and Stephanie (and Manatee) at Darlene's home.

Smallest church in America, down the street from Darlene's house.

From Darlene's we had a short, relaxing riding day to Savannah. We met Teddy yesterday afternoon of the Across America for Childhood Obesity- a similar cause to our own.

3/4 of the RASR team in Savannah- yippee! City hall behind us.

Love from Georgia,
Chelsea