Day 49: finally a short day

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 you biking across the country, too?” Apparently, we are not the first bikers to ended up in his backyard! He had another guy who was going from Vancouver to Boston do the exact same thing. He was so excited and happy to see us! Him and his wife were so lovely and were ready to house us and let us use their pool, but we were only 5 miles from our destination so we ended up passing on the generous offer. 

Tonight, we are staying with Tom and Heather. Tom actually just finished his third cross country journey and this couple has been housing UConn students for years now! When we rolled in, Tom asked if we needed anything for our bikes and we immediately pointed at one bike. I bet you can guess whose. Yeah, it was Brian’s. His bike for the past couple days has been making the most awful clunking noise to the point when Dustin was riding next to Brian today he said, “Brian your bike is the most annoying thing I have ever heard.” Tom graciously brought Brian to the bike shop, where thankfully it didn’t need any new parts and was a pretty quick fix. Brian got to play with the bike shop dog, while Dustin and I hung out with Tom and Heather’s cats. 

You would think after a short day we would be feeling pretty good and rested. Well, we did after we took a nice fat 2 hour nap on the couch. We needed to catch up on sleep desperately. Heather then made us the most delicious chicken rigatoni dinner! We devoured it! To then top off the night we went to Nicky Doodles for ice cream. So many flavors, so good, absolutely perfect. I would’ve taken a photo of all the food and ice cream, but it was all in our stomachs within 2 seconds. 

We are finally going to bed early tonight (I’m writing this as I lay in bed at 9:30) and are determined to leave early at 7am tomorrow for our 90 something mile day. We are over with finishing so late in the day and riding in crazy heat. 

P.S we got a text from Pat and Leo today saying they had a 12 hour day, 10 hours actually on the bikes moving, 122miles, and 6,000ft elevation. Couldn’t be us. Now these are some boys that wanna get home! Y’all should follow them on Insta @leo_and_pat_bike_cross_country or Leo Brickner on Strava to see them finish up in Maine in the next week.