Day 51: Border hopping

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 else we could have asked for. Meeting such close family friends of Julia’s was so great because she had sang praises about them for a long time on the trip and everything was true. Their hospitality is going to definitely be a highlight of the trip and we were all sad that we had to leave and bike away in the morning. 

Starting early was definitely the right move. We had an easy start to the day with it being so cool and got 27 miles in before I had even thought we had gone 15. Everything went smooth up until mile 35 where we took a snack break at the bottom of a big hill. Man these hills…I know everyone has an image of our legs being gigantic and super defined after biking across the country but the several flat states we just biked through have softened us. There is a difference between being in bining shape and being in hill-biking shape. We are no longer in hill-biking shape and it showed today with the heat. 2000 ft of elevation in just a few miles took it’s toll. Dustin actually was going slow up the hills (though this was probably so we could catch up to him), Julia was close to throwing up, and I was sweating through my entire shirt. But we did it!! We are the conquerors of large hills! And with only 24 miles after the hills to go, we flew through them knowing they were going to be flat. As we progressed through we hit not one but two different state borders! We only spent 15 miles in Massachusetts because it’s not worth staying longer than that, and were soon at the CT border taking one of our best photos yet! 

It feels so good to be back in CT even if Dustin has spent 90% of the trip bashing our high taxes and lack of mountains. Either way it is home and we ended today in North Canaan ready to be back at the health center tomorrow. How else to celebrate our last long ride? A trip to the local brewery and a flight of beer. Beer prices may be more expensive now that we are back east but that’s just because the beer is better and that’s all I’ll say about that. 

Tomorrow is finally back to Farmington, our school, our own beds, all our friends, aaand a thunderstorm that we will be riding through all tomorrow. But riding in the rain is preferable to riding in the heat so we will be happy as can be. 

P.S. we tallied up the number of views each of us has for the blog. I am winning, Julia is second, and Dustin is third. You should all go reread more of Dustin’s blogs because he has arguably the best jokes and it will be a good laugh for your morning routines. 

Photo Dump:

“ONE MORE DAY” - all of us