Day 51 -- Brattleboro, VT to Manchester, NH

Miles: 93.94
Total Miles: 3933.11
Time: 6:46
Average Speed: 13.7mph
Max Speed: 49.9 mph
Flats Today: 0
Total Flats: 15
Elevation Gain: 6003 ft
Weather: Tail winds around 80 degrees
Today was another great day of riding and another great day of scenery. Also, there was a lot of climbing today, so Wade took a bunch of pictures while we were riding. There was a lot of shade since we were climbing through wooded areas, so the temperature stayed rather low. Today was also Fran's birthday, so we tried to make it a little special for him. We woke up this morning at 5:30, ate breakfast at 6:00, loaded at 7:00, then began our second to last day of riding. Not even a mile into the ride, we crossed the Connecticut River and arrived in New Hampshire. Since there was no one to take a picture of both of us yesterday, we took another picture with the the Welcome to New Hampshire sign today. The picture didn't turn out that good since the sun was behind the sign, but it's still good enough to read. After the sign we immediately started up a big climb. It was a pretty gradual climb, but it was relatively long, so by mile 5, I was already starting to get tired. When we reached the top, my tiredness immediately went away because of the great downhill that we got to glide down. I got going 49.9 mph and Wade only got 48.9 mph, so I beat him today. When we told each other how fast we got going and compared, Wade immediately says, "Well you still aren't good enough to get over 50 mph like I did yesterday." Anyway, we rode that downhill all the way to a round about, then we made a turn into a town and stopped, so Fran could take some pictures of the downtown.

After we got through the downtown part of the town, we got into some construction, and it was really neat. A lot of the curb out here is granite and they even had it for around a radius and that is what I was looking at in the picture. I thought that would be cool in some of our streetscapes. I tried to talk to some of the workers about it, but none of them gave me any useful information. After the construction, we made a turn and began the steepest climb of the trip. It was a back road that went through woods and up to the top of a mountain. The grade of the hill started out at only about 10 percent, but it eventually made it all the way up to a 24 percent grade. I had it in my lowest gear the entire way up, and most of the hill I was looking for a lower one. We were just slowly moving up the hill, and some were moving slower than others... but I not going to say how slow I was. At the beginning of the hill, Wade saw Joy's light on the back of her bike, so he decided to go beat her up the hill. About a half of a mile later, Fran decides to go after them too. At this point and for the rest of the hill, I was the slow one... but I didn't care, I just wanted to make it at that point. Wade and Fran ended up both passing Joy, and Wade beat everyone that was in sight up it as well... he's not competitive at all. Once we got to the top, and my heart stopped trying to bust out of my chest, we got to go down. The worst part was that we couldn't go over about 15 mph down the hill because we were riding in gravel almost the entire way.

When we got to the bottom of the hill, we turned onto a different road, climbed just a little bit more, then arrived at the first sag stop. We stayed a very long time, ate a bunch, then headed out to do more climbing. It was relatively flat for almost a mile, then we began to climb uphill again. It was less steep than the last one, but it was still long, so we just took our time and got to the top. When we got there, there were some great views, so we took some great pictures then began our descent. This downhill wasn't quite as fast as the last one, but it was good enough to get a little bit of a rest from it. After we reached the bottom it was just long rolling hills that were too big to get enough momentum from the downhill to get very far up the next hill. Also at the bottom of the hill was a bunch of small lakes. We took quite a few pictures with some of the lakes, and I even practiced my wheel dipping at one of them. With the practice at Lake Erie and here, I'm going to be the best wheel dipper in the whole group tomorrow. We basically rode through that kind of terrain and a few towns all the way to the second sag stop. They had Panera Bread bagels for us at the sag stop as well as fruit, so we stayed a really long time, ate a bunch, then eventually headed out.

After the sag stop it was gradually downhills with some rolling hills all the way to a town that was about 10 miles from Manchester. When we got through that town, we turned and went straight up another hill. This climb was steep but not near as bad as the one we did earlier in the day, so we weren't complaining. We slowly made our way up the hill, then when we reached the top, we made our way into Manchester. We got about 0.2 miles from our hotel, then instead of going there, we turned and went to downtown Manchester. It was a pretty big city, so we rode through some traffic to get to the city, but it was worth it. We got to see the downtown, got our extra miles that we need, and I tried my first capuchino with Fran. We treated him to a cafe for his birthday, and he was appreciative, but he said the capuchino wasn't that good... at least I'll know what a bad capuchino tastes like though. After we were done at the cafe, we rode through some more of Manchester to get some extra miles, then we went to the hotel. It was definitely a great second to last day of the trip.