Today is the shortest ride, 47.9 miles. Stopped at a coffee shop for breakfast. The staff was a bit overwhelmed with all the people who stopped in before the trek of the day!
Cool socks!
The funny thing about the ride is that even though it would take a certain amount of hours to ride, it always took a lot longer for us - there were breaks that needed to happen, just to NOT sit on the bike for a while. And whenever we’d stop in a town to get food or a fruit smoothie, people who lived there would just come up and say hi. They were so friendly. We’d talk for at least a half hour! In Rockford we met Briggs. He was a retired auto mechanic and is now going to teach kids about fixing cars. He told us about his neighbor JT who was killed when his transport helicopter got shot down. It was on the news - JT’s dog Hawkeye laid down by the casket and stayed there.
Also outside of Rockford was a fossil preserve! We talked with Erin who told us all about the area.
During the Devonian age, the area was a beach and parts of it were under water. She showed us where we could find fossils! We found lots of tiny fossilized shells and marine invertebrates.
Aside from the many times we heard “she’s not pedaling” we heard some new ones: a lady sitting in a chair watching us go by…“Is she keeping up?” (So funny!) and, “God I wish I was on the back of that thing” another struggling rider said going up a hill.
The hills were intense. And so was the sun. In fact they had sag wagons which traveled the route to pick up anyone who said enough is enough. We called it the sad wagon. Felt so bad when anyone had to stop riding after looking forward to the event. They were taken to the next overnight camp. We hoped they’d try again the next day.
Charles City was filled with bicycles, people and long lines for food vendors - we decided to get subs and carried the food to camp on our handle bars. And called it a night.
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