The road trip resumed this week from Louisville, KY where we had stored the van and trailer during our time in Hawaii. The red eye flight was pretty brutal and we were happy to arrive in Knoxville, TN just before dinner after 24 hours of travel!
We stayed with our mate Eric Bell who we have gotten to know well over the past year. We were treated with the full "Southern Hospitality" and loved every minute of our time in Knoxville. We met a bunch of great people and looking forward to going back some time next year to check it out some more.
One thing I have wanted to do for years was go to a college football game. What better introduction to it than attending a Tennessee Volunteers game with our mate Eric. The stadium is huge and holds 107,000 people but unfortunately a cold rainy night cut the crowd down to around 90,000 (still the biggest crowd I have experienced) Above is a pic of the Volunteers running onto the field. The crowd went wild! 
The training in Knoxville was awesome! The University facilities are amazing and we had a great swim in the huge pool. I also got some diving tips off non other than Shannon Roy from Australia who won the gold medal in the 3m springboard at the 1998 Kuala Lumpur Commonwealth Games. He is now a resident of Knoxville and coach of the diving team! I worked up some courage and jumped (not dived!) off the 10m platform. It's high!
After three great days in Knoxville we headed south to Atlanta where we were greated by another friend we have met on our travels this year, Morgan Clark. She recently moved to Atlanta and now owns All3sports.com, which is opening an exciting new store in the northern suburbs of Atlanta soon. We did a nice little run along the Chattahoochee river on sunset before Morgan showed us around town and took us to a great Sushi bar. 
We were back on the road early the next morning on route to Panama City Beach, Florida. We arrived to a great unit that we were set up with from the homestay program. Above is the view out over the Gulf of Mexico at sunset. Amanda is ready to race this weekend!
