Day 39: Ferries, Hills, and Pitchers of Beer

-
Sleeping in a bed has got to be one of the best feelings. About one week into the trip I abandoned my ground pad because it wouldn’t stay inflated through the night and while this did save a lot of space in my packs, I’ve had some uncomfortable days on the ground. We all woke up today at Julia’s boyfriend’s grandparent’s house and had a wonderful breakfast of cereal and coffee cake before getting started with our day around 8:45.
https://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1Dto0AZFnd2swrhplPSsM_-C0cUN8xJCQ

Today was another day of blessed tailwinds (the last we will be getting for a while unfortunately) and our luck with winds held true because while we did have the winds blowing East, we were going mostly south to Madison. Wisconsin continued to be beautiful throughout our ride today and we had a great time enjoying the scenery as we tried to figure out our route. Since we are taking the ferry in a few days we are off of the northern tier trail that most bikers take so google maps has been our guide for the most part. Google maps kind of sucks and keeps trying to put us on major highways that have tons of traffic and give me deja vu to my fall in North Dakota so we changed routes halfway through the day and opted to go a different way that was only about a mile further down the road. 

When we were on one of our breaks, someone pulled up to Julia and I asking for directions. We had no idea where to point them or where we even were at the time because we don’t handle figuring out the route but hopefully we sent him in the right direction. Apparently we give off wisconsin vibes and look like locals, but not sure if that’s a good thing or not. 

After 72.5 miles total we got to our warm showers for the night. Carol and Kirt were wonderful and gave us an absolutely delicious dinner. Apparently they have been on Warm Showers for three years and we are the first group who has stayed with them so they were exceptionally welcoming and have been amazing hosts. Like a lot of Warm Showers hosts, they had toured the Northern Tier in the past and had lots to tell us about our upcoming journey. Apparently in the Green Mountains, the hills get up to 12-15% grade. Pat and Leo get to have a great time doing those while we bike down to good old CT on flat trails! 

After we had dinner, our friend Jin who just moved to Madison 4 days ago picked up the three of us to go grab drinks at a local spot. I opted for a simple 16 oz and some cheese curds while both Dustin and Julia went for whole pitchers. We traded stories of the trip and our time at UConn while trying to finish arguably more beer than we should be drinking for a 90 mile day tomorrow but it was a great time and honestly Madison is way nicer than I expected it to be, might move here eventually who knows.

Photo Dump:
https://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1Ty_LSOjcCdap1yRODKcQj36YTxTrRcKLhttps://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1Dj9vlm1shI5nmj4TwbMVbCjehYltM0rYhttps://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1ZVSemdCq7ZSNFm_XE1GZQGhx1kJg4cofhttps://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1BkgzGOxTgedbI7sKEQOUHH7ARjyVL0rPhttps://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1OlU9ofbShQdO6FjUY2qtIeasnF8Ly_bhhttps://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1ZicLDcr8c-vFwCS_i9sXg9mQz3NQ1JJy
*me not wanting to drink more of the beer pitcher*
“No! Put it in your body!” - Dustin 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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...
Read more

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 th...
Read more

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...
Read more