Our young Dutch friend Miriam, the other cyclist staying at the Utica fire station, was up and out early. We had enjoyed meeting her. She is one year away from finishing medical school, taking the summer to ride across the U.S. west-to-east as we are, and she has been riding mostly on her own. She left the coast of Oregon 19 days after we did, so you do the math: she's covering a lot more miles each day than we are.
The sky opened up about a half hour after Miriam left, so we took our time getting ready and eating breakfast. By the time we started the rain was almost finished, but the roads stayed wet all morning until the sun came out.
Our ride was 46 miles and despite the post-rain humidity, the route today was about as good as it gets for cycling: rolling hills and well-kept farms and country homes, and small towns every hour or so. Starting out, we wished there was a longer route with a destination where we could eat and sleep, but they put the towns in the wrong place. We have several days ahead of 40-50 miles, with 80-100 the only alternative. Nevertheless, by the time we reached the one motel at our destination today, we were glad to get out of the heat and "liquid air", as Sandy calls it.
About the time we thought about riding the 1/2 mile or so to a restaurant for dinner, we were hit by a line of thunderstorms which stretched all the way from Indiana to Tennessee. So we ordered pizza for delivery and enjoyed it while watching baseball on TV (the hated Yankees vs the Angels).
Something from last week I forgot to mention. We met a second young man riding west pulling a trailer with a dog, and again the dog was a pit bull. This one, Luda, is not trained to safely run alongside the bike, so Samuel often has to walk the bike and the dog up hills, since Luda is big and heavy.
Another item from way back, Sheridan Lake, Colo. While staying at the church there, I poured myself a glass of water from the tap. "Don't drink that!", I was warned: the water supply is contaminated with uranium. But they claimed that one faucet dispensed good water, since it was run through a softener and filter. We don't glow in the dark, but I still wonder how much good their softener and filter does for uranium.
We won't mind if the forecast of a sunny day tomorrow is accurate. The farther east we go the closer we get to what looks like perpetual rain on the east coast. Rain isn't a problem for us, but lightning is.
We are staying in a motel which was closed for a year because a plane crashed into it. We feel very secure because, as we learned in The World According to Garp, no building has ever been hit by two plane crashes.
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