PALM June 23, Day 1 Ready or Not

June 23, 2012

     Eager to get going we decided to stop at McDonald's for a quick breakfast, and then head to Grand Rapids.  The plan was for our son-in-law Ryan, who lives in the Grand Rapids area, to ride to St Joseph with us, then drive the car and trailer back to his house, where Tammy's hubby would pick it up at the end of the week, and meet us at the completion of our ride.  Sarah and Ariann were still enjoying each other and I was glad that Sarah could share in the excitement of our upcoming tour. We would drop Sarah off when we connected with Ryan.

    Such a pretty morning, a bit on the cool side.  Tony and I each donned long sleeves.  We loaded the last bags in the trailer, hopped in the Trail Blazer, and were off.   We got to Grand Rapids earlier than we thought we would, so Tammy went to Terra Trike to buy some fenders for her trike.  She isn't sure if she'll be able to get them on for PALM or not.

      Ready or not, here we come.  We left for St Joseph about 12:30 PM.  The GPS didn't want to recognize the school address so we drove around a bit before we found it. We were glad to see the PALM signs pointing the way.   It was so neat to see the excitement on the faces of others arriving.  The air was filled with energy.  I had a flashback to Tony's running days.  On race morning all the runners had to be there early to pick up their packets.  Families and runners skittered about like ants on an ant hill.  That's what all this energy felt like, the morning of race day.

     I was glad to see our friends Kiersten,  and Jeff, who was "around somewhere."

They told us where they were camping.  They had saved a spot for us.  We unloaded our gear and set up the tent.  More like a condo compared to the little 3 person tent Tony and I slept in last year.

Tammy and Ariann seem to have a system in putting it up, so we set about assembling our cots and let them and Ryan have at the tent.

 When that was finished we headed over to registration. It was good to see old friends there and to start making new ones.

Our next order of business was to make the name papers that go on the back of our bikes.

We chose Romans 8:31 as our PALM verse this year.  "If God be for us, who can be against us."

         More tents had sprung up while we were in the gym.

 
          Our meal tickets don't include supper the first night, so before Ryan left, we went out to eat.  Ryan headed home, we organized the tent a bit, then headed to our 7PM meeting.

There was a briefing on the next day, and some instruction on how to load our gear in the trucks.  Several children and teens were there to give us a demonstration of how things needed to loaded like logs.  They laid on the floor in a nice neat row, and smaller children went on top of them.  Like stacking logs, yep that's how the gear gets loaded.  All bags must be under 50 lbs.

        After the meeting we headed for bed. Quiet time is 10 PM.  Tammy and Ariann had a case of the giggles.  When I reminded them of quiet time, they laughed and told me they were still on SD time.  I'm thinking that by 10 PM tomorrow night, we'll all be asleep, no matter what time zone we came from.