Amazing Race

I probably should have read Shawn's post before I started writing this, but oh well. I have limited time on here.

The last couple days have had many ups and downs, both literally and metaphorically. The mountains have turned to hills and the headwinds are picking up. It seems that everyday one of us has a bad day. We just can't seem to break it, so we decided to take a break today after 8 straight days and 500 total miles of bikings. We are currently in Pulaski, NY, and plan on spending our day off in a park on a beach on Lake Ontario. Should be a good time of rest and relaxation. This also gives us a chance to give our clothes the proper wash they have been needing. Every night we wash our dirty clothes in either a creek or a basin and then let them dangle off our bikes the next day. Somehow, they never seem to quite get fully clean.

As far as the break downs are concerned, Evie had her first one on Thursday. Unfortunately, Karla and I were several miles ahead when she broke a spoke, but Shawn was there to help her. Actually he just came and fetched Karla, our bike doctor. She performed a temporary repair that got us to the next bike shop later that day for maintenance. Other than that, the maintenance has been minor but frequent. We have had to replace two tubes, tweak everyone's gears, and replace one crushed bike odometer (mine fell off yesterday and some RV dude ran over it at a KOA).

As far as our average distances and speeds, we have been getting anywhere from 40-70 miles per day, depending on our spirits, the number of hill/passes to climb, and maintenance delays. Shawn has been recording our average speeds and says that right now we average about 10 mph. I think we are actually picking it up now that the terrain is flattening out. Next will be the wind...

One interesting memory. I believe it was Tuesday, not sure, but it was the day we had to wait out a "tornado" at the library in Middlebury. Fortunately the storm totally avoided us, leaving us with a bit of wind and a few raindrops. At about 3:50 we got the bright idea to make an attempt at catching the ferry about 20 miles away. Initially we thought we had until 6:00, but later when we called to verity, we discoverd that the last time across the lake was at 5:30. I don't think we ever pushed so hard as we did then! We ended up sending Karla on ahead to stop the ferry and tell then that we are coming. The last five miles were grueling! There was 20 minutes to go and the crest of every hill produced yet another one to tackle. Fortuanate for us, the ferry delayed the trip by a few minutes in order to get us all across. Later Shawn said that the whole event felt like the television show, "The Amazing Race."