Day 50 -- Latham, NY to Brattleboro, VT

Miles: 86.75
Total Miles: 3839.17
Time: 6:07
Average Speed: 14.2 mph
Max Speed: 49.1 mph
Flats Today: 0
Total Flats: 15
Elevation Gain: 5416
Weather: Tail winds around 80 degrees because of the overcast
Today was an amazing day of riding, and it had a great amount of scenery. We, and by that I mean Wade, took a record number of 74 pictures today. Most of them were of me riding up hill and around great scenery, but we saw a lot of interesting things as well. Most importantly, today started out great for Wade. Last night at a ceremonial t-shirt exchange type thing where everyone brings a t-shirt that reminds people of them or about a significant ride they've done, Wade ended up with a XL jersey that wouldn't fit anyone but Big John. This morning, Wade went over to Big John and gave him the jersey. Big John took it, then since he's such a great guy, he went over to his suitcase, put the jersey in it, then grabbed out his Holy Cross Basketball shirt and gave it to Wade. It's the shirt of the team he played division 1 college basketball for. It was really cool for Big John to do that... I compared it to the Mean Joe Greene commercial. We woke up at 6:00, ate breakfast at 6:30, then loaded at 7:30 and headed out. We rode out of the hotel and didn't have anything to take pictures of until about 10 miles in. We were in a big group of people and we came up to a bridge that went over a river. We looked down on our cue sheet and saw that it was the Hudson River, so we stopped and took a few pictures. Right after the bridge, we came upon a tunnel, so once again we stopped and took a few pictures. At this point we had lost the group because they didn't take as many pictures as we did. We just rode at our own pace with Fran through forests for quite awhile. It was a great morning because it wasn't hot and it wasn't raining. I started singing about what a beautiful morning it was and not but a few minutes later, our misfortunes began. We turned the corner to get onto Route 7, which is what we took all the way to Brattleboro, and I heard a bang. I immediately thought it was a flat, but after some examination, I realized it wasn't. I once again broke a spoke on my rear wheel. There has been 2 broken spokes on this trip for the entire group... both of them have been mine.

We called the sag van and they said they would come and get me to bring me to the first sag stop so that Gerard could put a new wheel on for me. I said, "NO!!!" I'm not riding in that van. There's a thing that they call EFI, "Every Fantastic Inch," and it means that you ride every inch of the trip without getting in that van. I am what they call an EFIer. I refused to go in the van, so we walked a little ways, then Gerard came to me, he took the wheel off his bike and put his wheel on my bike, and he took the van and we went from there. Also, while Gerard was changing out my wheel, Fran got a flat. It worked out great because he changed it the same time I got my wheel changed. By the way, that's 8 for Wade and Fran, but only 7 flats for me... Wade claims that I'm losing, but I don't mind losing this battle. After our disaster, we rode the next 5 miles to the sag stop without any more problems. At the sag stop we ate about 10 apricots each, 5 brownies each, and a bunch of oranges too. We definitely got our fill, then we headed back out onto the road.

About a mile past the sag stop, we crossed over to Vermont. We took a picture with the Welcome to Vermont sign, then we continued on our way. It was great riding again and we went through some cool towns, then we came upon a really old town with a really old congregational church. There were other riders stopped there, so we decided to stop as well. It was neat because the church was so old and there was a graveyard where Robert Frost was buried. For those of you who might not know, like me, he's apparently a famous poet. We took some picture in and outside the church, which by the way had a weird design on the inside. The pews were in squares for families to sit at, and the seating was made so that the parents faced the front to see the preacher. It was definitely interesting, and we learned a little bit. After that, we went to the graveyard outside the church and looked at Robert Frost's grave stone, then looked at some other older ones. There were people who fought in the Revolutionary War buried in that graveyard. We could have stayed and looked at many of the graves, but we had to keep going.

Almost immediately after the church, we started our first climb. It lasted 8 miles, but it wasn't very steep for the first 4 miles. We were following Fran, and he really went up that hill quick. Wade took quite a few pictures of me riding up that hill, and the best part about the climb was that we followed a river up almost the entire way. At one point on the climb we stopped and took a picture of the river because it was so beautiful to ride next to it. After some pictures and some more climbing, we eventually reached the top and started on some rolling hills that were at the top. After about 4 miles of rolling hills, we began our descent. It was a steep downhill for 4 miles. Wade told me before we began the downhill that he wasn't going to break... and he did just that. He ended up hitting 51.9 mph going down that hill. He checked the max speed on his speedometer when we got to the bottom, and he was so happy when he saw that he got over 50 mph. I didn't get going that fast, so that's why the max speed at the top isn't over 50 mph. Anyway, at the bottom of the hill we took some more pictures of the river and Wade took more pictures of me and Fran riding with large hills in the background.

Not too much further past the end of the descent, we got into the town of Wilmington where our sag stop was at. Just as we got into town, I saw a sign that had John Wright's name on it. Wade didn't want to stop, but since it had John's name on it and an association between him and dolls, I had to take a picture and put it on the blog. After that picture, we went the rest of the way to the second sag stop. It was a very good sag stop with a lot of food for us to eat, so we ate... a lot. While we ate at the sag stop, Fran headed over to a deli to get a sandwich. After we were done eating, we went over to wait for Fran. When we got there, he had just ordered and the lady said he would have to wait to get his food, so he told us to just go ahead without him. We figured that we could do our extra miles that way too, so we went ahead. About a mile past the sag stop, we started our second large climb of the day. We climbed a little bit steeper of a hill for 3 miles, then we reached the summit of Hogback Mountain. It was extremely beautiful up there, so we took quite a few pictures, then began our descent. This descent wasn't as fast, so Wade didn't hit 50, but we still went rather fast. After we hit somewhat of a bottom, the terrain became more rolling for awhile, then it began to go down again. Once that downhill, began, it was just a slight slope and a nice tailwind that carried us the rest of the way to Brattleboro. When we got to main street in the town, we turned the opposite way we were supposed to go to our hotel, and we went across a bridge that went over the Connecticut River. On the other side of the bridge we were officially in New Hampshire. The route for the trip doesn't take us into New Hampshire until tomorrow, but we decided to hit it a day early. We rode our bikes in 3 states today.

After we took the New Hampshire photo, we rode down to a marina and took some pictures there. Wade even got close enough to feel the water, and I got close enough to a tree to go to the bathroom... we both got to do what we wanted. Anyway, at the marina there was a peach tree, and there were some good looking peaches on it. I was too scared to take one, but Wade went ahead and picked the biggest one. After we got done there, we went back across the bridge and rode through town for awhile to get some extra miles. We eventually made our way to the hotel, but before we actually went to the hotel, we decided to get some ice cream and cherries. We got the ice cream from McDonalds, and that was kind of interesting. We first tried to go through the drive-through on our bikes, but the lady on the speaker thing wouldn't let us. Instead I went inside and got us each an ice cream cone. We finished those up on our way to the grocery store, and I got some cherries there. After that, we finally went to the hotel. At the hotel, we ate the cherries, which were good, and Wade ate his peach. He let me have a bite, and it was absolutely amazing. He claims it was one of the best peaches he's ever had. Anyway, today was quite an awesome day, and I hope tomorrow is just as great.