June 6th, 2019 / (76km/47mi)
The last two days were ‘rest’ and ‘get ready’ days: Tim, my oldest son, flew in from Germany two days ago to finally join the trip and ride with me the remaining 1000 miles (approximately, I think that’s it roughly). His bike and trailer we had sent with Fedex to a FedEx location in Lexington, and it all arrived on Tuesday, too. Perfect timing. Everthing coming together and converging.
Yesterday we did some grocery shopping to not starve on the ride the coming day and rode into Lexington to visit a bike shop and have my break pads replaced: they were completely, absolutely completely (!), worn down. The 2400 miles up and in particular down the hills with a heavy trailer pushing from behind had taken their toll on them. Adding all the runs downhill sums up to 100.000 feet or 30.000m in the meantime (uphill the same, btw). And while I do ride hills down as fast as I can (safely), it still requires braking from time to time.
The rest of yesterday we spent on setting up Tim’s bike and going for Mexican food.
This morning we start relatively late, as the morning routine for “us” now being two has not yet been established: who goes to the bathroom first, how do we pack, going for a quick breakfast or not, how about sunscreen, getting everything out the door – just everything takes a little bit longer still and so it’s past 8am when we finally leave Lexington. The day promises to again be hot and muggy. The sun is out and the clouds in the sky are still moderate and not looking threatening. The forecast had again severe thunderstorm warnings out since 24 hours and today it’s supposed to rain at least later during the day. So we try to get our today’s leg covered.
The ride goes thru nice Lexington neighborhoods and we beat the morning traffic by taking side roads as much as possible. An hour into the ride, Tim gets “baptized” for the tour by having his first tire blowout. 20 minutes later we’re back on the road and head into more and more rural areas. The farms and houses left and right the road look like painted with their huge paddocks and a few horse in them completing the panorama.
As we continue, the sky turns more and more grey and it looks like it’s going to rain sooner or later. When we reach Berea, our today’s destination to keep day #1 for Tim rather easy, it’s heavy rain clouds everywhere. An hour after we’ve checked in into our motel, it starts pouring outside. Good timing. Now let’s see how things turn out tomorrow.
P.S.: I am amazed how much weather has become a topic to me. I know that’s totally boring, but if it’s the difference between making it in good shape or ending up being soaked or blown off the street, then it gets a certain relevance in your day. 🙂
P.P.S.: Just for the statistics: Adding one a**hole to the count of reckless, tuned, black pickups shooting by, keeping no distance while honking like an idiot. Makes 4. Still not statistically relevant in total, but it’s surprisingly many black, tuned pickups so far that show this kind of attitude. Almost a pattern.