Hurricane Force Tailwinds in Ohio

Physically Jeff had a better morning today. I was worried about him because we couldn't get him through Indianapolis last night and knew we were going to have to be dealing with commuter traffic in the morning. I woke up to trucks screaming by at 5am and the traffic was only increasing on what had been a nearly abandoned US 40 in the wee hours. I was nervous about putting Jeff on a bike considering his previous mornings' performances. Tim & Gail had the 1st shift in the follow van and I asked them to pin him to the shoulder so if he swerved he would hit our van instead of passing traffic. This ended up being unnecessary as he was physically fully awake very fast this morning.

Mentally however he was struggling and couldn't seem to understand why we were pushing him to ride his bike and kept stopping to ask why we were doing this. Everytime we reminded him that he was in a bike race he would nod and say something like, "Yeah, that sounds familiar, you need to keep reminding me about that so I don't get confused." That happened about 10 times this morning.

We crossed the state line into Ohio a little after lunch time today and mostly tail/slight cross winds have been picking up all day long and are now bending trees and destroying the time station volunteer tents. Great for Jeff as long as it keeps up in the current direction. We're 185 miles from West Virginia and hope to make it there tonight if the tailwind keeps up as Jeff has already covered 153 miles since 6am.

A link to today's News-Miner article by Matias: http://newsminer.com/2007/06/18/7542

Jeff being interviewed by RAAM media in Marshall, IL last night around 9pm