"Roadkill smells so much worse when wet!" - Day 25

Great news! The ride just got 500 miles longer! But we'll get to that later. Woke up this morning without being accosted by raccoons or park rangers. We left but I had to drop #2 like nobody's business. The first two towns didn't have convenience stores with restrooms. I was getting desperate and was a little bit ahead of Travis going up the hills in the national park. I spotted a porta-potty in the woods, threw my bike down in a spot where I thought Travis would see it and took care of business. When I finished, Travis was not waiting at my bike like I expected and had already ridden up the hill a half mile or so to a convenience store where he expected to see me. Since I wasn't there, he went on.

I went to the gas station to plug in my cell phone so that I could call him, left a voice mail and continued east. I stopped again at a McDonald's, thinking again that he was ahead of me and needing to plug in again because my battery was dead. Travis called and said he was ahead, so I set off after him. I was so concentrated on looking for him, that I didn't see the signs for Route 303 and ended up taking Highway 14 southeast to Ravenna. He realized I should've caught up to him already, called me and we made a plan to meet in Freedom. After asking for directions at a day care center, we finally met up in Freedom; hence the two paths in today's route map.

It was another slowish day after the delay I caused while we were separated. Around the Pennsylvania border we realized we probably wouldn't make it to Stamford until Monday evening, which is fine. The hills are beginning again, which is fun, but also harder. It has also been warmer and I went through another 3 slushee drinks today.
On the way into Meadville, we saw another biker come out of a church. He decided to "go out of his way to help us" by riding next to us in the traffic lane as we went up an arduous 1.5 miles climb to Blooming Valley on Highway 77. Turns out he was a born again Christian who had recently had a bad bike accident, didn't wear a helmet, got arrested while intoxicated and went nuts in the backseat of the cop car, had recently made love to a woman without compunction, claimed to be super humble, thought we were real american bikers, was in constant communication with Yahweh (the one true living god), and seemed mentally unstable. After directing us to a diner, but also giving us directions to a pub, he turned back around and headed back down the hill we had just spent 20 minutes climbing. After his prosyletizing, we were in desperate need of a beer and made a beeline for the pub.

One crazy dude

We're only 3 miles away from the biker we met in South Dakota, Jason's, house. We dropped his name at the bar, and one of the bartenders who also happens to be the fire chief's daughter, knew him. She treated us well by asking if we could camp on her father's property. ANother man in the bar, "Gus," paid $20 for our next meal, which ended up being this one as we were low on cash and they did not accept credit. Everyone was very friendly and interested in what we are doing.

As I got into my sleeping bag, my friend Laura sent me a text inviting me to North Carolina on her family vacation there. Google says it's only 460 miles from Stamford to Kitty Hawk and then her family could give me a ride to St. Louis where it should be cheap to get a flight back to Denver. So that's the new plan and the reason for the bike ride getting so much longer. Yay!

Time	Trip	Odometer	Average	Max
8:55:05	114.2	2815	12.8	44.9*

*Broke Travis' previous speed record and set the new high!