Posts

Day 53: the last blog

Image
Hey y’all - it’s Dustin, sorry the blog is late for the last one… probably because the rest of our day started like this:  Anyway: so we got up and left for our last ride to the beach around 830 - our friend Lenny was a trooper and decided he would ride with us the 44 miles to hammonaset and he did an awesome job! He did so well that we went too fast and how to slow down so we didn’t get there before the welcoming committee. We were getting a bunch of angry texts telling us we were too fast so we stopped for ice cream at Ashley’s which is supposedly the best in CT - it was pretty good - I got peach and there were also frozen pieces of peach in the ice cream which is nice! Also - in a desperate attempt to keep the trip going (I don’t know why she would want to do that) Julia decided to run over some glass and get a flat tire! Her first since Washington state, and the groups first since Montana - I think she did it on purpose…  Anyway, after our entourage finally showed up at the beach w

Day 52: WE ARE HOME!

Image
It’s the one and only Julia! Today is the day - we are finally home (I mean we still have to bike to the coast tomorrow, but that’s a later problem because tonight we finally can sleep in our own beds!) It has just been a surreal day. We only had 39 miles to home, so the end was very much in sight. Personally, I thought that today was going to be nice and easy since it’s a short day…. HA these routes always be playing. The whole first part of the day was straight uphill. Gotta love those nice 8% grades to kick off a day. Don’t worry, though, there was no tears or fear of vomiting so I call it a success! (Oh it was also raining all day, but it was actually pretty nice to have it cool us off) We were then blessed for the rest of the ride with mostly downhills. It was *chef’s kiss* beautiful. The night before Dustin and I were going back and forth about what route to take, and I will admit that Dustin was right and after the beginning, his route was basically all chill and downhill. (Dust

Day 51: Border hopping

Image
If you read yesterdays blog you know that we started super early, around 7:15 am versus our usual 9:30. Well we decided to one up ourselves yet again and started at 6:30 today. That meant getting up at 5 and while it’s obvious that we like torturing our bodies because we decided to do this trip, sleep is sacred and I am tired. Why did we wake up at these god forsaken times? Because we have been avoiding the heat wave that’s been hitting the rest of the country all summer and we have the privilege of riding right into it the past few days. Today was no exception with the high being 93 degrees, hot for just enjoying the outside, and overbearing for riding 80 miles in. But with the end in sight we dug deep and got all of our stuff together with bleary eyes to begin our day. Special shout-out to the Crafts for being some of the best hosts that we’ve had on the trip! An amazing dinner last night, a huge breakfast at the crack of dawn, showers, beer, drying our tents for us, and anything els

Day 50: the early bird

Image
Hey y’all - it’s Dustin again - today was pretty short and sweet so the blog will obviously be at least 5 pages (jk it’ll probably be short because we are tired and just want to be home). Today we woke up earlier than we have in weeks at 6am and had a stellar breakfast of eggs, bacon, sausage, and oj thanks to Heather - and then promptly got on the road at 7am. Coincidently leo and Pat are also no longer here.. sooooooo I’m not going to say they were stopping us from starting earlier.. but you know.. 🤷🏼‍♂️ and if Pat or Leo are reading this - you know it’s true. Anyway - Tom decided he would ride with us for about 30 miles and FINALLY I had someone there to tow me along since for the past few weeks I’ve been almost exclusively doing the towing - honestly I don’t really mind that much because I like being in front - but it’s fun to give Julia and Brian a hard time about it - so I’ll continue to complain until the joke isn’t funny anymore. Just like how I complain about Julia being the

Day 49: finally a short day

Image
Hey it’s Julia! What a lovely day it was today. We woke up in beds (which is always a good start to the day, compared to when we have to sleep on the ground) and we had a great breakfast with Tracy and her husband. Dustin was able to bond with them through Wordle, Formula 1, and New Hamphire because he finally found someone else who loves that state as much as he does.  We shipped off for our nice short 38mile day. Honestly, this was a much needed day. We have been doing some crazy long days and I think we were really starting to feel the tiredness kicking in. Also, we are truly riding straight into this heatwave and we did not want to be in the blistering afternoon heat for a 3rd day in a row. So today we carried the moto of “Easy, Breezy, Beautiful. Biker Girl.”  Today was pretty uneventful. We accidentally went down some grass trail that Google Maps said would have a bridge (it did not) and ended up in someone’s backyard. The owner was outside and came over to us and was like “are y

Day 48: And then there were three

Image
Today marks two very important occasions. Today marks only five days until we finish the trip and is the day we finally separated from the Philly boys. We’ve had five or six times where we thought we would be separating from Pat and Leo throughout the past month of biking with them but today was the real one. We started the day traveling together for about 20 miles on the same Canal trail that we were on yesterday before getting to a crossroads where Leo and Pat were going north and we were going east. Tears were shed, snacks were eaten and Pat promised to send Dustin an ‘I love you’ message every night.  Once the boys were gone it was quiet. No movie quotes, random yelling, or old jokes. We had a 96 mile day ahead of us and we were trying to mentally prepare ourselves for another 76 miles. Our preparation wasn’t enough. Today was another hard day. We have been pretty lucky with heat so far on the trip but we are actively biking into the heat wave and it has been ROUGH. We had a little

Day 47: I love getting yelled at and hit by a car - a New York story

Image
As my eyes opened all there was was pain.. I felt so good yesterday after riding 130 miles - I felt like I leveled up in life - but this morning - my body reminded me that I didn’t quite have enough XP - my glass knees are once again screaming - and my legs muscles feel like they are going to tear in half with every step no matter how much I stretch..  Oh and just so everyone knows - despite the title of the blog - no one got hit by a car today Anyway, we had a pretty late start today after going to bed really late last night. We got going around 9 and got some breakfast a dennys which was ‘okay’ but it did the trick and filled us up. After that we got our bikes and started to set out. We had planned the night before to take a picture with all 5 of us at the falls in the morning because it’ll be our last day together, but it was so late by the time we left we decided to forgo that since we had 93 miles to ride.  Things have a way of working itself out though because we got stuck at the