The 2006 Great Peanut Tour

We had been told that the Peanut Tour was all about rest stops and food and it proved to be correct. There were thirty of them along the various courses set up for the four days. Mike and I did not use many of them, but we still had the opportunity to enjoy the fact that they are set up in the homes of volunteers who open their yards for the ride. Very nice feature.
Every night, there was some kind of entertainment during dinner and then entertainment and marshmallow roast by a camp fire in the camp site. We went to the Friday and Saturday ones, and I particularly enjoyed the Saturday featuring Blue Grass music.
We had dinner on Friday and Saturday and enjoyed it. It was set up under two large tents and gave plenty of opportunity to socialize with other riders.
There were quite a few members of TBA on this ride, Mike Rogers, Dennis Bondi, Jack and Donna, Mike Scott, Mike Smith and Terry, Tom and Carol Lilley, Pat Brian and Ralph, Micky, and probably a few more that I either did not know (there were other tandem riders) or did not see.
On Saturday, for the short afternoon ride, we rode with Harvey from Washington, DC who was on a fixed single speed 1938 Schwinn with wooden rims and original cranks and was spinning at like 150 rpm on the downhills ! This was quite fun. Harvey told me that he has 15 bikes in his garage, all of them antiques. If this is not a passion, what is . . . .
The weather remained perfect throughout the week-end, sometimes a little too warm, some mornings quite humid, but over all perfect weather for riding. Although we were not given an official number, there were registration numbers higher than 1.200, so we can assume that there were more than 1.200 riders.
On Friday we did not do the full century, only the second loop of 82 miles, and on Saturday we were confused by the literature and the sign that said that the metric century had been replaced by a 47 miler. So, we only did 206 miles for the whole week-end, but did not really missed the 34 miles that we did not ride.
As usual, I have posted some pictures, including the official group photo on the set of my photo album dedicated to riding in the US.
There were other activities over the week-end, like guided bird walk, forestry walk, eatible plant walk, in which we did not participate, but that most certainly added to the opportunities to fully enjoy that long week-end in peanut country.
By the way, the banana split was really worth the trip !