just because you can doesn't mean you should

Yesterday was hellacious. Let me explain the cause of our misery. Some how we planned our first week wrong... all wrong. I have to be back in Asheville on Friday for graduation on Saturday. Our planned route had us arriving on Saturday... a day too late. So, we decided to skip the "off the beaten track" roads of the outer banks and ride Hwy 64 all the way out of the first day. Consider this: Hwy 64 seems to be the main road going in and out of OBX. Further, we were riding it on a Sunday afternoon when all the weekend beachnuts were driving home. Genius.

Needless to say, we were thrilled when we were able to ride Alternate 64 the next day almost all day. So 95 miles on the first and we knew that day 2 would be roughly 100 miles. Seemingly unfortunate, my cycling computer stopped worked after 5 miles on the second day so we had no idea what our mileage was. We passed through numerous towns with little more than a sheriff's department, a church, and a service station. Tarboro, NC was a surprisingly nice town. We had lunch in front of the courthouse by a pretty water fountain where I got some nice shots. We filled up out water supply in the courthouse and shook it up a bit. 2 guys in lycra with clicky shoes walking on a marble floor stand out a bit when everyone is in a coat and tie or dress. I politely told them that I forgot mine at home. I was shocked that neither of us had to take of our shoes for the metal detector.

64A was the easy part except for the hills. Someone told Lee the Raleigh was flat; wrong. We started hitting some heavy rollers in Wake Forest that were killing us. We each took turns taking longs pulls for each other in the front. How Lee managed to damn near sprint out of the saddle up those hills... I don't know. Apparently he has become very comfortable on that rig. I am just lucky, I suppose, that my bike and I weigh more than he does so I always caught up with him on the downhills.

We got to Wake and promptly lost our sense of direction. I stopped in a Storage facility and bothered a nice old man to let me use his computer. Even with directions, the finally 15-20 miles of our trip to Sarah's house was ridiculous. Riding through the suburbs kinda sucks. We never actually got lost; we always stopped and asked for help before that happened. The problem with that was that no one seemed to know anything about the town that they were in despite that fact that they lived there. We were hoping to connect to some of the greenways in Raleigh but it really was not that simple. The W&Od trail system in DC is amazing, Raleigh should model after it.

So we finally arrived at Sarah's house after dark. Before we started this trip, Lee said he would never ride after dark. Needless to say, we will be picking up his tail light in Winston tomorrow night. Sarah, the awesome host the she is, set us up with a chow down meal and some arnica gel... ah legs. I was so delirious that I was unable to speak well. The beginnings of my sentences were mush. Before we retired for the night, Lee suggested that we ride straight to Winston-Salem tomorrow... 120 miles. Yeah, no...
We will be heading out to Chapel Hill today, only 35 miles or so down the road.

So, just because you can ride 220 miles in 2 days does not mean that you should. I am glad we are on schedule though. We plan to reevaluate our itinerary and cut some/most of our 100 mile days.