Day 14

Day total 107
Trip total 861

Added another state to our collection  this morning;

1. Massachusetts
2. Connecticut
3. New York
4. New Jersey
5. Pennsylvania
6. Delaware
7. Maryland
8. Virginia
9. North Carolina

I went to sleep in South Boston Inn and Bar and Grill with an impending sense of doom, 107 miles in one day, really?
That's what it would take to get to Louis' friend Marlynn's mom's house in Winston Salem NC. 107 is way more milage than we have pulled off thus far, and so I went to sleep feeling anxious about the journey.

I was pleasantly surprised by my moral today. We got up early at 5am no problem (8 hours of sleep in a real bed is an amazing thing). The early start granted us some spectacular sunrises as we bike our last miles through Virginia and into North Carolina. 

We actually made better time today than the ten miles an hour we have been plodding along at. If that sounds slow, which it does to me, remember that we are towing 50 pounds of weight plus our bikes (about 60 pounds each), and that nothing is really ever flat. But this morning knowing we have some serious distance to cover we rode like there was a fire under our asses. That is meant to be both metaphor and an accurate discription of what it felt like to be biking 107 miles under the north Carolina sun in July. 

Previously when we would chat with people (mainly at gas stations) they have said we were crazy because of our milage, today people said we were crazy just for being outside. It was 96 by 10am this morning. I worked out a successful solution to the sun with a little help from the Salvation Army in Reidsville NC (see photo below).

In Winston Salem we were greeted by Dave and Susann whose gracious southern hospitality was much appreciated after our long warm day of biking.