The rest of the way to Milford

We decided to try riding east to west this morning and maybe let the wind be more of a tailwind than a headwind. That didn't work out, however, it blew from the south (in sailing, this is called a "beam reach") and helped not a whit.

It was uphill again this morning as I rode away from Penny's Diner (and bathroom) and I got a really good scare within a few miles. The shoulder was only about 6" wide and I was concentrating on riding the painted white line where I think the road is smoother. My head was down . . . and then 4 feet ahead was a two-foot long snake stretched into the road, it's tail at the outside edge of the pavement. Not enough time to stop or move left around the head. I yelped, went onto the gravel part of the shoulder and missed the rattling tail by an inch or two. I spent the next several miles calming down, being glad it was a rather chily morning, thanking God, and fantasizing about what I would have done had I been bitten.

Is that a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on the ground?
Why, yes, it is!
When Dick and I met to switch riding duties, he decided to have a sandwich before starting out. It was early afternoon, the wind was really blowing. His sandwich was on the trunk lid. A semi-truck (they have the triple trailer types on the roads here) came barreling past. The extra rush of wind blew that sandwich 10-feet away. One of us thought it was sort of funny, the other person angrily made himself another sandwich.

The city office of Milford redeemed themselves somewhat in the afternoon. I went in to ask about getting a bathroom unlocked and the town clerk happily complied. "Sure, no problem, we do this all the time for bicyclers, as long as we receive the call M-F between 8 am and 4 pm. I'll tell the maintenance crew to unlock one of the bathrooms for tonight. You can also pitch your tent on the grass near the pavillion where there are tables and I'll have them turn off the sprinklers which come on at 5:30 am." Later, she drove to our campsite to let us know that the maintenance crew would NOT turn off the sprinklers, but we could move our tent onto the concrete floor of the pavillion.There were a few co-ed softball games tonight with LOTS of children on the nearby playground equipment and lawn. We would have liked to fall asleep early but instead we listened to a group of five little kids pretending to be vampires, werewolves, and Wolverine (from the X-Men movies). They chased each other growling and howling, the tables of the pavillion being "safe." It was hilarious.

Miles = 701