71,12 km – 9H39’71,12 km – 9H39′
A stage in two parts
Serge doesn’t like to run at night, so why leave at 6:51AM in the thick of night and in the midst of a pine forest that only makes the picture darker? Well, Serge has a conference scheduled at 3:30 pm and he has to be in front of his computer with broadband and “Skype”. We organized this stage to enable Serge to have a Skype connection with a conference room in France where some 100 people are waiting to hear from him.
Serge has no intention of limiting his day to a 59 km run at 3 PM, so he decided to take to the road again at 4:45PM to finish the day. I had trouble understanding reason but after all, it was his decision. So here we go, 1H30 to cross the city of Cordele. It is the 2nd city we have crossed today, after Sylvester this morning.
We are in Georgia heartland and yet we are approaching Atlanta, a metropolis of 5.5 million people, more than half the population of the entire state (10 million). It is comparable to Miami and its suburbs to give you an idea of size. That puts these two cities in the 8th and 9th position of the most populated cities in the USA. However, there is a major difference: the density of the population is 2 to 1 in the two states. There are 119 inhabitants per square km in Florida and only 69 in Georgia. You can understand why Georgia seems so quiet, especially on the less travelled roads.
So until we get to the big city, we are enjoying rural tranquility and I dozed off between two feedings. We feel the fatigue and the sun has come out, which makes us feel sleepy at the beginning of the afternoon. So, we open our eyes, remain awake and concentrate of the day’s objective.
