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Sunday, July 20, 2008

"Ah hell, the worst they could get is a warning!" - Day 28

When I write tomorrow we'll be finished! Not a lot to report from today, other than that Pennsylvania is stupid hilly. We met two friendly motorcyclists at the top of a hill that had a nice view of the beautiful wooded farmland below and exchanged e-mail addresses with them.
As we pedaled past Heart Lake, the director of the camp that owns it saw us looking longingly at its cool waters. He invited us to disregard the no trespassing sign and hop on in. It felt great to cool off and have wet clothing during the afternoon.
We stopped for lunch at a diner in Jermyn. When we asked for directions to get back on Route 6, a nice old lady told us to just get on the expressway on the outskirts of town. Another gentleman retorted that the "staties" wouldn't allow it. The old woman replied "ah hell, the worst they could get is a warning!" Needless to say, we rode illegally on Route 6.

My achilles was acting up with all of the hills, so our pace wasn't great as the day went on. I was able to pick some rasberries along the side of the rode while waiting for Travis, which was nice. Before we realized it, we had ridden past the bigger towns and were committed to make it to Milford. This was unfortunate, as the sun was setting and eventually set. We had 8 miles to go when it got to be dark. It was downhill into Milford but we had to take it a little slower than we would've liked because Travis had the only light. I still set a maximum speed of 41 mph in in the dark though!

In Milford, we grabbed dinner before looking for a place to pitch our tent. We were having no luck until we rode by the United Methodist Church, where the lights we were on. Pastor David kindly opened the church for us to use the restroom and allowed us to camp in the yard. I can't wait for tomorrow; we've only got 91 miles left!

TimeTripOdometerAverageMax
9:50:59120.7317912.241.0

"Endless mountains." - Day 27

Two days to go! The tent keeps smelling worse and worse, after getting wet during the rainstorm in Iowa and with me sleeping in it not having showered since west of the Mississippi River in Davenport. Fortunately, after tonight we'll only have one night left in it!

When natured called this morning, we immediately turned to the old outhouses on the baseball field where we were staying. The men's was locked, but Travis was able to get into the women's. It was undoubtedly the filthiest restroom I have ever used, but we were both overjoyed at its convenient location just 100 feet from our tent.
We made it out of Smethport along the supposedly closed road that the guys at the bar recommended. We made good time most of the day considering the hills and it went by rather quickly. We've started to find the most ridiculous stuff funny and it's easy to tell that we're both getting very anxious to be finished on Monday.

We finally broke 3,000 miles today, which is about 600 more than the great circle distance between Seattle and Stamford. But it leaves us with under 300 miles to go.
Our destination for the night was Towanda, where we got Chinese food and went to a crappy bar where a guy with a ridiculously animated handshake pointed us in the direction of a park across the river. It's super hot out and our sweat adds to the stench in the tent. The thought of only one more night is an extremely welcome one.

TimeTripOdometerAverageMax
9:19:44
124.7
3058
13.3
41.6