After a pretty tough 9 day stretch of riding, it was a great feeling to know that I didn’t have to get back on the bike this morning. I just wish that I could actually sleep past 5:30 AM, but I just seem to automatically wake up around that time. It’s amazing how your legs can recover with a good night’s sleep. My coach tells me that’s why you train so hard to get to that point – and that at the end of P2P you’ll never be stronger on the bike. I think he is right about that – I never could have imagined getting to this point a year ago. But, if you set a goal and have a workable plan to achieve it – you just have to work at it.
This has been productive rest day. I left the hotel before 7 AM with my laundry bag in hand and headed over to the Bridge St. Laundromat with a Ziploc bag full of quarters left over from Madison, but stopped on the way at Ella’s Acres for a real breakfast – trying to avoid the powdered egg and processed breakfast products for as long as I can. Ella’s was excellent and some others from our group were there as well. Afterwards, It took me less than an hour to get my laundry done and that will take me all the way to Portland.
As luck would have it, Fernando’s Barber Shop was right across the street and I was in and out of there in 30 minutes and $40 poorer with a pretty good buzz cut. After dropping off my laundry back at the hotel, I headed over to Corning Bike Works for a skull cap and some thicker arm warmers since we’re looking at some pretty cool weather next week in the low 40’s ( and I’m sure more headwinds).
The couple that own the bike shop saw my long sleave tee shirt from The Boat Shed in Georgetown and they knew that Georgetown was on the Intracoastal Waterway. Turns out they have a 42 foot boat they keep on Lake Ontario and when they retire next April they are going to become Loopers. This is a group of folks who travel the Great America Loop – a 6,000 mile route that circumnavigates the eastern portion of the United States combining the Intracoastal Waterway, Atlantic Ocean and the Great Lakes. If you spend anytime on the Waccamaw River or the Winyah Bay, you’ll see plenty of these folks – especially in the warmer months. They’re easy to spot. Anyway, I gave them my information and they said they’ll connect with me when they get near Georgetown at some point down the road. We’ll have to wait and see about that.
Tonight we have our group dinner at The Three Birds restaurant. Apparently it is a well-known restaurant in town so I have high expectations. As we head into the final stretch of this adventure, we are all excited for the final 6 days of riding, but they will not be easy. Trek Travel has made an adjustment to the schedule posted on this website, no longer will we be taking the Ticonderoga to Hanover, NH route of 88 miles and 5,288 feet of elevation gain. That route will instead go to St, Johnsbury, VT – a 104 mile route with 8,188 feet of climbing! Ugh! Apparently, last year the weather was fantastic so all the ‘leaf gazers’ from Boston decided to take a day trip to see the colors and it was a nightmare with really bad traffic for the prior route. It will be a hard ride but nothing like we haven’t taken on before.
So, I am feeling good and find it hard to believe how far we’ve come. I am excited to take on these last 6 days of riding and while I will miss the daily routine we’ve become accustomed to, I look forward to getting back home and getting back to my old routine, but this time without a job to do for the first time since 1986. I head to NYC for my last day of work before they send me to the pasture and I formally retire on October 1st.  But life is all about closing one chapter and opening another.
In the meantime, here are some random pics from our 9 day stretch from Madison, WI to Corning, NY. Enjoy!