Day 8

Being that we had nothing to do today, we felt no need to get up immediately. We eventually drifted out of the room and I got to see some of the people I had met on the Run the year before.
We walked a little way to the McDonald's we had seen the night earlier and had breakfast there. It was 11:30 before we stopped talking and went back to the hotel!

After a couple of hours we were able to sign in for the Run. It didn't take long, but the lobby of the hotel where the sign-in tables were was packed! When Dad and I got to the end of the line we saw Mark Rittermeyer. He had promised me last year that if I wore the Run For The Wall arm band all year, he would pay the ten dollar fee to get registered for this year. And, true to his word, just before they asked for the money he came up and handed me two five dollar bills. The fee was paid and I got my second arm band snapped into place right next to the first one. I told myself that once I got to the Vietnam
Wall I would cut them both off right there.

Once that was all taken care of we went to go get lunch. But somehow the time had passed by so quickly some of the stores had their dinner menus up! We had some huge burritos and after that got some ice cream. By the time we had finished with all that I was stuffed and content.

Last year on the Run a man walked up to me and gave me twenty dollars to buy myself a patch. I never did buy one that year, but saved it until this year so I could get one. As we walked back to the hotel I got another chance. We had earlier agreed on what I should get: a patch with the USA on it and all the states lined out. Whenever I went into one of those states on a motorcycle I could color it in. We found a large patch like that for six dollars (plus a sewing fee that totaled it out to ten dollars). This was much cheaper than I had expected and I was thrilled. But I could not buy it at the time because there were too many customers and some technical difficulties. So we looked around for another of that kind of patch, but we could not find one that was cheaper. Dad decided we could wait until the next day or even later--after all, we had the whole Run to get it.

When evening was coming on we walked back to the hotel room. The lunch had been a little late and so large that I was not even hungry that night when I got into bed.