Day 46: 130miles… yeah you read that right

Hey hey it’s Julia! So this morning I had the pleasure of waking up to Dustin calling over to me, “hey hey Julia…. Do you wanna talk about Marco Rubio and student loans?” When I responded with a groan and rolling over in my sleeping bag because I was still half asleep and my alarm had only just gone off, Dustin was not pleased. “Julia it is always a good time to talk about student loans.” I would beg to differ. 

Once we finally got up, we had an absolutely incredible breakfast with our WarmShower hosts. Makiko is a great baker! She made these cheese stuffed breads and another kind of stuffed bread. We haven’t had this great of a breakfast in a long time. Much better than Clif Bars and gas station food. 

We really thought when we left this morning that our luck was finally turning because we were gonna have headwinds and fairly flat roads, but the weather decided to play tricks with us. Not even 10sec into our ride it starts to downpour. The heaviest rain we have seen all trip, but fortunately it only lasted 5 min (long enough to get us nice and wet). 

We then were met with this cyclist that saw we were heading to the river trails and started chatting away with us. She started asking Dustin way too many questions, though, about the directions we were taking, to which he just responded “I don’t know. I just go where Google Maps tells me.” She was not pleased with that answer and just had us follow her for a little bit…. Maybe she took us the right way - I don’t know. I just go where Dustin tells me to go. 

So originally when we left we thought we would go to Hamilton, which is about an 82mile day. Somehow (I don’t know when) we got the brilliant idea to just go all the way to Niagara Falls, a cool 130miles. I mean I was fine with this idea at mile 40 and even at mile 60, but oh let me tell you, at mile 75 in the brutal heat of the day (in case you haven’t gone outside in a bit - there’s a massive heatwave… everywhere) I was not happy. I had a good little cry, Dustin bought me an ice cream, and I was rejuvenated to finish the final 55miles. 

At this point, you are probably thinking “what the hell is wrong with these people?!” Well we were thinking the same thing. We think that every day actually. I think it is really starting to get to the group how close we are to home and that can make you do some crazy stuff I guess - like bike an absolutely absurd amount of miles. Don’t get me wrong, by the end of the day we felt like death. The final 5 miles we really thought we were gonna lose Leo and Brian. Brian was ready to keel over and Leo was disassociating from his body, but don’t worry the thoughts of a hotel and beer carried them to the finish line. Somehow Dustin got some boost of speed at the end - it was probably the Haribo gummy bears he had stashed in his handlebars. 

After the day we had, we really earned a hotel room, so thankfully we were able to put my moms Marriott Titanium Elite status to good use. With some much needed showers under our belt, we walked across the street to feast on some steaks and massive beers (tonight I opted for a Mule, however. I know - sacrilege). Since we are at Niagara Falls we had to go check them out at night, so we wondered over to the lookout. It was really cool to see them lit up at night!

Well tomorrow will actually be a shorter day to Rochester (we won’t go adding an additional 50miles this time). We will be back in the States! We are sooooo close!