Day 4: Middletown CT to Sutton MA (86.2 miles)

Day 4 Full Flickr Photo Set

OK, today is going to be a "thorough" entry. A LOT happened today, easily the most eventful day of tour. So let your eyes take a deep breath... and here we go...

We got up this morning around 6am and had to do the motel shuffle to get everyone out without being spotted (busted). Stealthily, 3 bikers slipped under the radar out to the main road while I checked out of the room. As I was leaving, the motel clerk ran out to stop me (gulp), but instead of yelling about the other people in the room, as I expected, she was waving a $20 bill and smiling... hmmm? Apparently, she wanted to donate to the Katrina cause on behalf of the motel! So, we got our first (unexpected) contribution today. Next step- find a red cross donation center!

After a brief stop (and pose) to get ourselves situated, we set off to the foggy horizon. It was cold this morning- notice the long sleeves!





































About 20 miles down the road, *POP!*- I blew a spoke. Looking at my front wheel, I could see that it was severely out of true now and rubbing on the brake. I was struggling to crusie even downhill, and we were hitting a generous batch of hills about now. Peter's knowledge of the area from grad school put the nearest big city about 20 miles ahead... which would take me ALL day at this rate. So, once again, we asked the magic 8 ball (GPS) where the closest bike shop was... around here it was slim pickins'. But we had a chance to find a bike shop about 3 miles away. Ok.... push, push, push....




















En route to the phantom bike shop, we ran into a couple on moutain bikes (Donna and Denis Jenks) and stopped them to ask if the shop we were looking for would be able to help us. They asked us what our problem was and said the nearest shop that could handle a spoke was about 10 miles away. After explaining our situation, Donna offered to help us out and drive us to the bike shop! We agreed to meet them at their house and GPSed to the address. OH MY GOD, were we surpised at what we found!




































As we approached the address, we were blown away! What nice people and WHAT A NICE HOUSE! After killing some time talking to the friendly neighbors, Donna and Denis pulled up and welcomed us into their beautiful home, offered us drinks and were all around wonderfully helpful people. After a brief tour of their lake-front home and a quick photo-op exchange, we were off to resuscitate my front wheel.




















In a few minutes, we pulled up to Bicycles East in South Glastonbury, CT. Although they didn't open for another hour, the store owner, Steve Dauphinais was inside getting a head start on the day's work. Donna had frequented the shop (which she highly recommended) and knocked on the door to talk to Steve and explain our situation. Peter also spoke with Steve and explained that he was a bike mechanic in Philly and if it would be easier, he could just do the work himself, replacing the spoke and trueing the wheel. Steve agreed to let us into the shop and gave Peter free reign over the shop tools! A little while later, Steve's wife, Deb, showed up to set up the shop for the day. We pitched in to make it easier on them since they were doing us a HUGE favor. After the spoke was fixed and the shop was ready for business, they didn't even charge us for the service! WOW, what a town! Where are these people coming from!?































































After a stop for breakfast, we were starting to notice a trend developing... this entire day has been almost EXCLUSIVELY hills. This will end up playing a major roll in the rest of the trip. These hills are killer.

Along the path a spell, we stopped for a quick break to regroup. Since we were nearby Peter's old campus, we were discussing stopping by to see his old grad lab. While we were on the topic, Fran Funk wondered up to us to ask us what we were up to (being a sharp investigator). We explained our bike trip to her, as we did to many folks along the way, and she explained that she was with the local paper "the Chronicle" of Williamtic, CT and she'd like to talk to us more about the ride. We went on to spend the next couple of hours talking with Fran about bikes, the trip, Peter's involvement with the local area in grad school, life, the universe and everything... We even stopped at the local ice cream shop, "the Dairy Bar", to chat over some ice cream and root beer floats. Fran was another GREAT lady that we had the pleasure to meet along our journey and we exchanged information with her. She left us sweet comments on this post too- Thanks Fran! Last I heard, the editor was only planning to use one of the many, many pictures Fran took of us (including action shots of us riding by!), but the story should run and I'll try to link to it, or post it when it hits the stands...































































Oh yeah, and on our way to the Dairy Bar, we ran into these three go-getters, selling cupcakes to benefit the victims of Katina. Well, well, well, what do you know, I just happen to have a $20 bill with Katrina relief written all over it. How about $20 for your last 2 cupcakes? deal! We bought their last 2 Katrina-cakes (immediately housed by Kevin and Jeremy) and gave them the rest of the day off. Way to go girls!






































After all this excitement (and sugar) we were itching to get back on the road... and back to the hills. Seriously, I can't stress enough how many hills there were in CT and how freaking big they were! Just one after another after another after another... they wouldn't stop. At this point everyone on the team had switched from their fixed gear setup to the free wheel so that they could coast down the hills... except me. Since I had already made it this far and was dealing with the hills as best I could, I was determined to make it all the way to Boston fixed. There's really no practical reason for it, just pure machismo. I kind of just wanted to prove it to myslef that I could do it, despite the fact that it was probably not the healthiest decision for my knees. I spent the day crawling up the hills and then spinning back down pushing 40 mph.



































After dealing with the incessant barrage of continuous hills, we decided to re-evaluate our plan of action for the day. Originally, we'd planned to make it to Boston today, which all in all would have been a 120 mile day. Not an unrealistic goal. But, after the blown spoke, the hills, the paper interview, and more hills, we were pretty far behind schedule. We agreed that there was no way that we'd make it to Boston today before sunset, and that we should just GPS to a nearby motel and play that game again...



















As the sun was setting on our way to our new destination, I was stricken with another mechanical difficulty- high speed flat! Today was not my day. But, we were in a much better position than we were yesterday since we didn't have far to go this time. Peter, being the tire changing speed champion of our team, took to the task. Then, in an effort to make us feel useful, he let Jeremy and I pump the tire up- it's pretty hott.

























Another close scare I had today was two, count 'em, TWO high speed Treo ejections. While riding down some of the larger hills, I hit some spotty paved areas that had been patched and repatched. The speed coupled with the bumps was enough to LAUNCH my Treo from the Krussell bike mount on my top tube and send it skidding across the pavement (and making my heart skip a beat). Not only does my Treo organize my entire life, but we're especially dependent on it right now because it's our sole means of navigation. Luckily, it survived both crashes which speaks to the solid construction of this PDA/Phone combo... what is significantly less impressive is the Krussell bike mounting system. Granted, it offers a convenient way to make my Treo easily accessible and visible while riding my biek, BUT, I'm not going to use it if I can't trust it, which makes it worthless. In the end, I came to terms with the shortcomings of the bike mount and used it for smooth road surfaces and low speed riding. Anytime I'd approach a hill or bumpy pavement, I'd unclip my Treo and secure it to my shoulder strap clip (good thing I thought to bring that too, huh).

At the end of the day, we successfully made our entrance to the destination motel and went out for pizza to celebrate a job well done. Today's terrain (80 miles of hills, did I mention that?) really put us to the test and now, Boston is so close we can taste it. MMMM, taste that? It's tea and beans, baby. 40 more miles tomorrow, piece of cake.



















Map of Day 4 Route:





















[Editor's Note: Since I did a full update to this day's blog which incorporated several other blog postings, I had to copy and paste some of the comments left on other blog entries to this posting. That's why the last few comments all say they were posted by me.]