By this point in the journey I've lost track of days versus shifts. So we will go ahead and call this day #5, but it could still be day 4 or 6 or 92. Jeff, John, Bill and Eric started the day nice and early at about 6 am to meet the Green team in Fort Scott. Jeff kicked it off with a nice hike to a stop sign for the exchange. Whenever possible it made sense to exchange riders at a stop sign because we had to obey traffic signals and come to a complete stop anyway. This way the retiring rider wouldn't have stop a second time for the exchange. This didn't always happen, but it was a good rule of thumb. At about this point in the journey cat naps came heavily in to play. When it was the riders turn to sit in the back seat of the follow vehicle (the Honda Pilot), they took advantage of every second of sleep they could.
The ZZZ team passed by Time Station 32 in Camdenton, MO where the friendly volunteers ran to snag the support vehicle some chocolate chip ice cream. I remember speaking with one of the volunteers at this location last year as the White team had passed through and was appreciative of their hospitality. There is also a fairly cool barn there in Camdenton, MO that I was able to snag a picture of Bill Zeh cruising on through. The ZZZ team continued on to Gerald, MO where team Green was prepped and ready to hit the road again.
Because of the time zone changes and issues finding good transitions points with hotels the switching of teams had migrated to night versus day for the most part. Since the ZZZ team had started at around 6 or 7 am, they rode all day until about 6 or 7 pm. Originally the teams were splitting in the middle of the afternoon or middle of the night since the race started at 12:34 for our team. But as we travel across the country and switch time zones, a team goes a little longer to an exchange or finding a place with a hotel cut's another team short that exchange point moved more to first thing in the morning and around dinner time. This gave the Green team a couple days of mostly night time riding. The Green team took advantage of using each other to help encourage and keep each other awake on the road. A couple times they would ride in tandem on the road at night just to have someone else there or for a new rider to stretch their legs a bit. In fact as they pulled up to the next exchange point in Effingham, IL all 4 riders came in together!!!