Thanks to Jon Crispin for the photo.

Before Jim, Sara, and Brad disbanded, they spent several hours trading stories and thinking about what they have learned over the last ten weeks. Many of the events that inspired these aphorisms are written up in the blog.

Riding
Rain is OK. Mud is not OK.

It’s never as hard as the convenience store guy says it’s going to be.

If it’s going to be more than 90 degrees in the afternoon, get rolling before sunrise, quit no later than 2pm, and find a campsite with shade.

If the road has a narrow shoulder, ride on the white line and use hand signals to encourage vehicles to swing into the passing lane. Most of them will. If you ride on the shoulder, even a narrow one, no one will move over.

Put lots of flags, reflectors, and lights on the back of your bike. We encountered aggressive drivers only about a half dozen times in 3,670 miles of riding. But every day we met people who passed too close to us because they either didn’t see us or didn’t care.

Two of our six encounters with nasty drivers were with people driving Hummers.

There is often a better alternative to the busy highway. The Adventure Cycling Association’s maps are an almost foolproof way to find these alternate routes. If you aren’t on an ACA route, ask the guy at the convenience store.

Unscented baby wipes are a must. So is Bag Balm. Details on request.

They should make disposable bike shorts. You can never pack too much underwear. And if you need more, the ones at Wal-Mart really aren’t bad.

The Biblical commandment about resting on the Sabbath Day makes a lot of sense when you have an outdoor job. After six straight days of riding we were dull, sore, and more prone to make mistakes. The best reason to take a rest day is safety.

Eating
Use caution when eating meat in the middle of a long ride. Even if you’re really hungry, a triple-decker is an awful idea. You will feel like your guts are packed with Silly Putty.

Simple sugars and carbs are best during a ride. Liquids are better than solids. Lots of little meals are better than one big one.

Don’t order a milkshake until you see the Hamilton Beach machine.

Don’t eat at a place that won’t make you a grilled cheese sandwich.

Most middle-aged people are lactose intolerant. Don’t order a milkshake unless you’re prepared for the consequences.

When your riding partner is farting, stay at least ten feet back.

Don’t drink more than two beers after the ride is over. Riding with a hangover is no fun.

Camping
Make sure you have a comfortable place to sleep. The Coleman Ridgeline cot ($42 at Wal-Mart) was much more comfortable than sleeping on the ground. It was light and folded easily. It was by far the most important piece of gear in Brad’s kit.

A middle-aged man who is doing physical labor all day can never get enough sleep. If you feel like lying down, go ahead.

Use extreme care when making reservations. Web pages lie. A lot of private campgrounds have a high “creep factor” that you can’t detect until you get there. Look at the showers before you pay.

There’s always a place to stay. Keep looking. Go to the nearest store and ask questions. You can always count on the nice ladies at the Chamber of Commerce.

Personal care chores require way too much time in camp. Why do commercial washing machines still demand quarters? Snack machines take dollar bills. When will washers catch up?

Earplugs and a face mask are essential for nights when you’re near a train track, a highway, or a street lamp. Taking a Benadryl will help you drop off to sleep and it isn’t habit forming. But if there’s a singalong in the next campsite, abandon all hope.

Vault toilets are really not so bad, as long as you have toilet paper. Bring your own.

You can cook great meals using the cheapest pots and pans.

There are items you’ll never use that still give you comfort. Sara got a warm feeling every time she saw her frying pan. Brad brought a ponderous history book in case we were ever snowed in.

Thinking
Brad’s neighbors are the greatest.

Living in the moment is overrated. Two months on the road packs your brain with so much unprocessed imagery that you can hardly put two words together when someone asks you what it was like. It proves Socrates was right: the unexamined live really is not worth living.

Choose crew members who laugh at your jokes. Don’t ride with people who don’t laugh a lot.

It is almost never a good idea to get all worked up over something. There’s too much you can’t control.

Anybody who can walk uphill for an hour without stopping can ride over the Rocky Mountains on a bicycle. It ain’t the dog in the fight. It’s the fight in the dog.

That’s all, folks. Thanks for reading!

The rain tapered off and left behind a stiff north wind. Added to an air temperature in the 40s, it meant that our last day was also one of our coldest days. We left around 11am after my old friend Jon Crispin, a professional photographer, showed up to record the festivities. We had 25 miles before the Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve in Wells Beach, Maine.

Traffic remained heavy but we were sheltered from the wind, and before too long we crossed the state line and turned east on state route 9. The road was flat and before long the buildings thinned out, and we were in a coastal deciduous forest being stripped of its leaves in the raw wind. We rode into the town of Wells and turned north on US Route 1, picking our way through the cars and broken asphalt and closed fish-fry restaurants until we reached the entrance to the Reserve. It is a beautiful spot, a preserved farm complex on 2,200 acres, and we spent an hour talking with scientists and the President of the Board about its dual mission of research and education (see separate post).

About 2:30 pm we threaded our way down Drakes Island Road to the Preserve’s beach, where we ceremonially dipped our tires in the water. We also unveiled the hat of Al Craig, in whose memory Jim and Sara made the trip, for the last time. Sara brought some bubbly and we had a toast, but it was too cold to stay long. So we went to a nearby restaurant and said our goodbyes over tasty bowls of real clam chowder. Then it was time to disband.

The trip ended well. We finished in good shape physically, and Jim and I still like each other enough to plan more rides together. Not until it warms up, though.

Our ride ended at the Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve in Wells Beach, which is located on a preserved 2,200-acre site that combined five coastal farm properties. Europeans began cultivating the land in the 1670s and kept the farms running for 300 years. When the last private owner died, local residents formed the Laudholm Trust to buy and manage the properties. The 1910 owners gave the name to the main home and barn complex by combining “laud,” to give praise, with “holm,” a meadow on the shore. The Farm Trust was established in 1982, and the Reserve was dedicated in 1986. The Trust now has about 2,500 members.

Wells is one of 27 National Estuarine Research Reserve sites scattered around the country. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration contributes 2.3 times the amount raised for each site by state or local sources, and Wells is the only site where a private not-for-profit organization is the local source (all the others have state funds). The Reserve monitors the health of Maine’s estuaries, which are under increasing pressure from housing development. “We’re trying to show how commercial fishing and community clam beds depend on clean water. People need to understand that degrading those estuaries has an economic impact on the state, “ says Jeremy Miller, a researcher at the lab.

We spoke with Laudholm Trust President Diana Joyner in the Trust’s offices inside the renovated farmhouse. “The reserve is a mixture of things,” she said. “It’s a precious piece of open space for people in Maine. There aren’t many places on the coast where you can hike on seven miles of trails. It’s also a community space where people get married, have parties, and gather in all kinds of ways. And it’s also a research facility. The Trust’s job is to keep the community engaged at a high enough level to make sure the research continues to get the funding it needs.”

Our cabin for the night was on Little Sunapee Lake, and we woke up on Tuesday, October 21st to a view of perfectly calm water. The morning weather guys said that rain wouldn’t start until around nightfall, so we set off at 9am under mostly sunny skies, and the clouds didn’t start thickening until right when the TV said they would. It turned out to be a beautiful day for a ride – slightly warmer than the last few days had been, with brilliant sunshine every once in a while and fall scenery that was still spectacular.

Unfortunately, New Hampshire is a densely populated state and a lot of our ride on Tuesday was along busy highways, We were relatively safe because the state has put wide shoulders along most of its roads, but it’s strictly business when you’re riding in traffic, so I didn’t take many pictures. We rode through New London, Andover, and Tilton, which had a statue in the middle of the highway that was just too weirdly beautiful to ignore. Then we went on to Franklin, where we got off Route 11 and the traffic lightened up considerably.

We started toward Rochester on state route 140 and went through Belmont, where we had lunch at the town’s one diner – it was new, and they didn’t know if they could make a grilled cheese sandwich (see Jim’s comment to yesterday’s post). Jim reported that the Belmont public library building was really old and that the door made a scary squeaking sound when you opened it, but that the two women inside were very friendly. Most of the townships we rode through had welcome signs that gave their founding dates, and most of them were settled well before the Revolutionary War. We rode past the Gilmanton Town Pound, a corral of huge old stones that was used in the early days to safeguard cattle that had wandered off their owner’s property. I hope they still use it sometimes.

A marker told us that the rural road we were following was the “Old Province Road,” one of the first highways in New Hampshire. It was authorized in 1765 to supply northern settlements from the tidewater port of Durham. Many of the houses along the road were from the 18th or early 19th century, and the scenery for us was probable the same as it had been for travelers 200 yers ago – we were finishing our ride down the hills toward the coast, and at one point we crested a small rise and thirty miles of plains lay in front of us. We probably could have seen the ocean if the clouds hadn’t gotten in the way.

It might have been a 240-year-old highway, but it was also very much in the here and now. New Hampshire is a battleground state for Obama and McCain, and we’ve seen more signs for McCain than for Obama in rural New Hampshire – but the closer we got to the coast, the better was Obama’s showing. More impressive, though, has been the profusion of lawn signs for local offices. They really like electing people up here, and they really like lawn signs. Or maybe it’s just that the election is in 13 days.

We rode through Rochester as the first sprinkles of rain started. We were safe in the motel Sara had found by the time the weather got yucky. It was the second 70-mile day in a row and we were beyond exhausted, so we ordered a pizza and zoned out on TV. Tomorrow is supposed to be much colder, with a strong north wind. We have 25 more miles to go.

Jonathan Wright worked at the Taylor Farm when he was a teenager in the 1970s.  When he came back to Vermont in the late 1980s, the farm needed so much work that the Taylor family let him live there just to keep the place going.  “Everything was obsolete,” he said.  “And after a while I just decided to go with that.  Now I’m proudly obsolete.”

In 1996, an investor bought the 500-acre farm from the Taylor family.  Instead of making a housing development out of it, the investor sold an easement to the Vermont Land Trust on the pastures and woodlot and sold the remining 22 acres, including the house and barns, to Wright.  “I had had some success with making cheese, and they saw that the farm could work economically,” he said.  “The Land Trust also saw that this is the kind of place where people are encouraged to walk around and look at things, and it gives them a good feeling about Vermont agriculture.  It’s the kind of farm landscape they want to protect.”

Taylor Farm grazes 50 cows on 60 acres of pasture. It is a “farmstead cheese” operation, which means that Wright will not take in milk from other farms to make his cheese, even though it would make him a lot more money.  “There are a lot of advantages to staying small,” he says.  “For example, when we bring the cows in, all we have to do is wash their udders with a disinfectant.  At corporate farms the cows are fed high-protein feed, so they have loose stools and lots more chances to get infected, so you have to bring in all kinds of measures to control that.  We don’t have to go there.”

Taylor Farm was one of the Vermont Land Trust’s first forays into agricultural easements, which have since become a major focus of the organization.  Over 97% of respondents to a survey completed by the Council on the Future of Vermont said that they value the state’s working landscape and heritage—more respondents agreed on this than any other statement in the survey.  When asked about the challenges facing Vermont, over 92% of respondents said that they were concerned about the health and viability of Vermont farms and the agricultural sector—making this the second highest concern of respondents overall.

Wright spends a lot of time on boards and government groups promoting Vermont agriculture, and he has seven full time employees and more who work part time.  The farm turns out about 100,000 pounds of cheese a year and is famous for its smoked gouda.  “I don’t have to advertise at all,” he said.  “And I think we’ll get through the recession pretty well.  You might not build a house during a recession, but you can always spend $10 on a wedge of cheese and feel better about yourself.”

We woke up to a hard frost that didn’t thaw until after 9am. Riding a bicycle in late October can be just as pleasant as riding one in June, but you only get a few hours a day to enjoy yourself. We set off just before 10 am with 70 miles and the Green Mountains in front of us, knowing the sun would set at 6pm sharp. We would spend the day on Route 11 in Vermont and New Hampshire.

Maybe it was the months of riding, or maybe we had scared ourselves with too much information, but the Green Mountains weren’t nearly as tough as we expected them to be. We climbed for about five miles and the road leveled out and we were soon coasting and climbing, the hills small and manageable. We stopped in Londonderry to talk to John Wright of Taylor Farm, then pressed on.

We were hungry by the time we reached the next town, Chester. The big disappointment of the day came when a bakery that we were counting on had closed; in the off-season in tourist areas, people often close on a whim. Just down the road was an old building with an interesting-looking café and two young women behind the counter. We ordered two lunch specials and two hot drinks, sat in two mismatched but interesting chairs, listened to pleasant music featuring a woman singing in a foreign tongue, and wandered around the racks of bulk nuts, vitamin supplements, and stones with words like “imagine” carved into them. Jim got into a conversation with one of the woman, who said that she was from South America, her husband was a shaman, and that every year they went to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota to encourage Native Americans to re-connect their ancient memories with the legends of South American tribes, because they were all the same thousands of years ago. Then we paid up: $28.

“That was a fantastic experience,” said Jim, with no trace of irony. “We’ve been Vermonted.” Earlier he had wondered aloud how all these people made a living. The Moon Dog Café gave us our answer. They sell $28 sandwiches to people like us.

We rode over a ridge and down into Springfield, a congested mill town that fortunately had bike lanes and a bike path. Then we crossed the Connecticut River and entered New Hampshire, and the next thirty miles were a slog along a busy highway and a really long commercial strip that ran from well south of Claremont to well beyond Newport. Fortunately route 11 had a wide shoulder, so we never were in danger, but the noise and anxiety of heavy traffic nearby took their toll. Clouds were thickening and the light was failing when we started up the west shore of Lake Sunapee. Sara had found us a two-bedroom cabin with a kitchen, so we ate in, watched satellite TV, and plotted the last two days of the ride. Rain is predicted for tomorrow afternoon and evening.

A campsite at the bottom of the Mohawk Valley isn’t the warmest spot you could choose. The barge canal was warmer than the air, so it steamed all night and we woke up surrounded by fog with an air temperature in the low 30s. It was well after 9 am when the sun burned the fog away, and even then the temperature was hovering around 40. But we had to go, so we put on every scrap of warm clothing we had and pedaled off. We were as insulated as deep sea divers.

We turned up state route 67 and rode out of the Mohawk Valley in bright sunshine and brilliant fall color, although it was still way too cold. The strengthening sun pushed the fog higher into the sky and made cumulus clouds out of it; traffic was light and the road had a good shoulder. Amish and Mennonite farms are common in the deeply rural parts of New York, and we saw men harvesting corn by hand in one field, piling it into shocks. Then we rode past a man driving two mules pulling a flatbed cart. Three girls in plain dress were standing perfectly still along the back rail of the cart. Was it lunchtime already? Were the girls allowed to work? I wanted to ask and take pictures, but I didn’t dare.

In Ephrata we rolled past the Saltzman Hotel, which looks like a place the owners care about and is unlikely to be making much money. After another half-hour we were in Johnstown, the seat of Fulton County, and the home of Jim’s Aunt Fran and Uncle Larry. Larry was off in the woods because it was opening day of bow-hunting season, but Fran, her son Bruce, and Bruce’s son Joel met us at a diner for a late breakfast. The Forever Young’s Restaurant is owned by two Korean women. One of them sold us a special omelette made with beef marinated in homemade Korean-style sauce. It was tasty, but damn it was a lot of food. We rolled out of there about 12:30 with churning guts and 30 miles to go to Saratoga Springs.

The tangle of highways in Johnstown was too much for us. We took a wrong turn, which meant that we spent an hour or so on rural roads getting back to our route. It was a Saturday afternoon in mid-October and people were doing battle with their leaves – raking them up, blowing them around, mowing them into pulp, burning them in the ditches. Such sacrifices for the sake of a lawn! Where the leaves lay was like gold and red carpet in the bright sun. This was our first day of climbing hills in quite a while, since South Dakota, really. We also were on the edge of Albany sprawl, so the roads were full of urban drivers who did not treat us with much respect. The last two hours were hard for these reasons, and it was with great relief that we pulled into the small hamlet of Rock City Falls, which is just a few houses and an abandoned mill a few miles west of Saratoga Spings. Sara met us there and loaded our bikes onto the truck for an eight-mile drive to the campsite.

After cleaning up we headed into Saratoga to meet my wife Tania and an old friend who was our host for the evening, Henry Tepper. We had a great meal and two hours of riotous fun at the Springwater Bistro, and then Henry drove Tania and I back to his house to see wife Jane, daughter Kate, son Miles, and to sleep in a heated room. A perfect end to the day.

Day 70: Saratoga Springs to Manchester, VT

We met Jim and Sara at the intersection of highway 29 and the Northway (Interstate 87) and started off around 10:30 am. The road was crowded and the shoulder was small. It was another brilliant fall day, and people were out buying pumpkins and looking at leaves – lots of people. We rode past an apple orchard just north of the site of the Battle of Saratoga, where General Schuyler repelled the British and turned the tide of the Revolutionary War. A large stone obelisk marks the spot where the British surrendered. Shortly thereafter we rode past General Schuyler’s Internet Café in Schuylerville. No wonder he won the battle.

We crossed the Hudson River and rode on to Greenwich. We stopped there at the Local Market, which specializes in natural foods and local products, for coffee. We had a great time talking to the proprietor, Margaret Jones, and as a present she gave us a bag of energy bars that are being made fro natural ingredients in Saratoga Springs. Natural Performance “replenish” bars are made from rolled oats, honey, almonds, and other things you have in your kitchen, not the synthetic stuff you find in a lot of other energy bars. They taste good, and they give you the glycogen boost you need at the end of a workout. Thanks, Margaret!

At Greenwich we started following the Battenkill River upstream toward Vermont. To our great relief, the leaf-peepers and other distracted drivers seemed ot prefer a different route, and we had a beautiful road to ourselves. We rode past the Shushan Covered Bridge Museum, which was closed, and then missed a turn where we were supposed to cross a bridge that had been closed. We went a few miles out of our way and had turned around when Tania came back to the crucial turn and waited for us. I have no idea how she knew we would miss the turn, but we have been married seven years now. Anyway, she seemed pretty pleased with herself.

We switched to state route 313 and continued up the Battenkill to the state line. The scenery immediately improved, with well-kept Greek Revival homes and big hillsides that still had a lot of color on them. At Arlington we found a back road that would take us to Manchester, which was a big help because north of Manchester are lots of big outlet stores and the traffic was starting up again. But the village center is right out of a Norman Rockwell painting, which isn’t surprising because he used to live in Arlington. We switched to Route 11 and began battling our way up the Green Mountains, but only for two miles. Tania saved the day a second time by finding us a great motel, the Toll Road Motor Inn, which had a hot tub and wifi (and heat!) and was near good restaurants. Old friends of ours who live nearby, Meryl Stark and her husband John, came by to visit, and Meryl stayed for dinner. Tomorrow we finish climbing the Green Mountains, and then it’s a coast to the coast.

Thanks to Lloyd Peterson for making the map. Click on it for a better view.

On Sunday we will cross into Vermont on State Route 313 at Arlington, then take Route 7A to end up in Manchester that night. Then we will climb the Green Mountains on U.S. Route 11, reach the top in Londonderry, and continue to cross the Connecticut River in Springfield. In New Hampshire the route continues on U.S. 11 through Claremont, New London, and Franklin, then switches to state routes 140, 107, and 126 to get us to Rochester. We will continue on routes 108 and 236 to the Maine border. The last 30 miles are on state route 9. We expect to finish the ride at the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge late on Wednesday the 22nd or early on Thursday the 23rd.

Rain set in overnight and was falling steadily when the sun came up on Thursday, October 16. The forecast said that the rain would end around noon, but the 45-minute ride to Savannah from Ithaca was still grim. Tania dropped me off at a gas station/convenience store, and I made the clerk look twice when I brought five bags in with me. “Looks like you’re moving in,” she said. “I am, but only for 15 minutes,” I said.

Jim and Sara pulled in and when we set off at 11am, the rain had stopped but the road was wet. We set off in full gear — fenders and rain jackets and neoprene galoshes – and we were soon damp but not soaked. We took Route 31 east through the muckland north of the wildlife refuge, across the Seneca River, and through hard-scrabble towns like Port Byron and Jordan. The Erie Canal Towpath Trail started up again in Port Byron, but we stuck to the pavement in an attempt to avoid mud. Then in Camillus we had no alternative to the towpath, and soon our bikes and bags were spattered.

After Camillus the towpath trail ended and would not start up again until we were past Syracuse. We started through the city on Milton Avenue, which took us past one of my favorite Syracuse restaurants, Eva’s European Sweets and Polish Restaurant, and we were just in time for lunch, too. The chicken and dumpling soup was delicious, and Jim said that their hot chocolate was made from scratch. I ordered a plate of potato pancakes topped with Hungaran tomato-and ground-beef goulash. I could happily eat at Eva’s three times a week, but I would quickly weigh 300 pounds if I did.

Eva’s was a good consolation prize for the chore of riding through Syracuse. New York State Highway 5 is an official bike route, and in the city it follows Genesee Street downtown to Clinton Square, then continues east out of town on Erie Boulevard. Our old friend “sperm man” appeared and lead us to some lower-traffic alternative roads. He is what we call the spray painted route markers we think are put on to the pavement by New York State Parks and Trails.. It was mid-afternoon and not rush hour yet so the traffic was tolerable, but it was also urban riding on bad pavement with strip-mall scenery. The drudgery continued until we got to Interstate 481, where Old Erie Canal State Park begins.

Old Erie Canal State Park is a 34-mile stretch of the original canal bed, which was dug in 1817-25 and widened in 1851. Boat traffic now runs on the New York State Barge Canal (1908), which bypasses this section to go through Oneida Lake and re-joins it in Rome. The old canal doesn’t serve any commercial purpose any more, but in the years I’ve used it it has become more and more popular with boaters and bicyclists. The clouds were lifting and soon sun hit the oeak foliage as we moved through Syracuse’s rich eastern suburbs. Then we rode on to Chittenango, where Wizard of Oz author L. Frank Baum was raised, and onward to Canastota, the hometown of Heavyweight Boxing Champion Carmen Basilio. Thanks to Basilio’s influence the Boxing Hall of Fame is in Canastota; it was closed, but we waited there for Sara to come and pick us up. The nearest campground was 11 miles away because camping season is over. A cold front had come through and a north wind was stiffening as we set up our gear and made dinner. By nightfall it was in the mid-40s, and it would be close to freezing overnightl.

Day 68: Fish Creek to St. Johnsville, NY

Our campground on the 17th was on Fish Creek, which drains into Oneida Lake and is home to hundreds of geese, ducks, and other birds. We slept long and deep because of the cold, and the birds woke us up at dawn. It is possible to ride a bicycle when it’s below 40 degrees Fahrenheit, but if you don’t have to, why should you? We waited to leave until 10 am, when Jim’s bike thermometer read 45. But it was a sunny day, and by noon it was perfect riding weather.

We rode back to the canal towpath on county roads and crossed an early 20th-Century steel-deck bridge over the barge canal. It had been closed and was waiting for the wrecking crew. Soon we were met by a friend who came up for the day – Lloyd Peterson of Canandaigua, a faithful training partner for Jim and a blog volunteer for me. Lloyd met up with us at the Erie Canal Park outside of Rome, where several busloads of schoolchildren were being wheeled around a small track in an antique train.  Lloyd took a panoramic photograph of us in front of a canal boat by taking several overlapping ohotos and then stitching them together with photo software.  Can you find the seams?

We rode on city streets through Rome, then left town on a county road that took us back to the towpath east of town. The towpath here borders a large wildlife refuge on the north side, and beyond that is Griffiths Air Force Base; if you’re lucky, you can see a huge B-52 take off over the marsh, its engines shaking the earth, but we didn’t see anything on this day. We rode on through the day until the towpath ended just outside of Utica, and then we braved some overpasses and heavy traffic to get to Bleecker Street for lunch. Bleecker Street is where Utica’s Italian neighborhood had its heyday. Those days are long past but a few restaurants and pastry shops hang on, and they are so good that you’d think you were in Brooklyn. We ate chicken parm subs at O’Scugnizzo Pizzeria, owned and operated by the same family since 1914, and then finished it off with pastries and coffee at Caffe Caruso. “I could eat six of these, but then I’d have to take a nap,” said Jim, after the first bite of his Napoleaon.

Lloyd turned around and the two of us pushed on eastward, through Franklin, Mohawk, and other beaten-down little towns in the Mohawk Valley. At Little Falls we picked up the towpath again, and the last ten miles were a pleasant churn through fallen alder leaves on a surface of hard-packed stone dust. Sara had found us a great campsite at the St, Johnsville Municipal Marina Campground, wedged between the barge canal on the south and two active rail lines to the north, with the whine of Interstate 90 in the near distance. It will be a night for earplugs, but after riding 70 miles in cold weather you can pretty much sleep through anything.

On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday October 13-15, Jim and Sara went back to Canadice and I returned to Ithaca for three days of rest at home. The delay will allow Jim to see his daughter Rachel at the end of the ride, and I have used the time to open mail, run errands, and see friends. We start the final week of riding on Thursday from Savannah, NY, and we expect to finish near the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge in Wells Beach, Maine on Thursday the 23rd.