How can so much happen in one day? As quickly as it seemed to arrive, end end of the tour arrived just as fast. I suggested yesterday that we do the 50-smile ride in exchange for getting up earlier. Which I did. I hope you feel special, Cynthia. Knowing that I’d feel less enthusiastic about […]

Today was practically perfect. Even though I had yet another terrible night of sleep, (It’s too still. Also I’m sleeping on the ground.) I was my normal happy self today. We got underway by 8:30 on the 54 smile route under overcast skies, which made it nice and cool. We only had to navigate a […]

The strain begins to show. I did not wake as my best self today. Despite my desire, my mind and body were not ready to sleep last night. I saw 11:00, 12:00, 1am pass before finally dropping off. I generally have problems getting to sleep anyway, but last night I was hot, my legs were […]

Today’s theme was elevation. I’m going to show off the Strava shot first, to provide data for the story. We left town for today’s 48 smiler through Staunton, although the route did hit some new roads getting out of town. They all went up, so I got my heart pumping pretty quickly. As you can […]

Planning to be out well before nine… Riiiiight. Anyone who knows me will be unsurprised to hear that target was missed. Not by much though. By the time we were rolling it was only around 9:30. Good enough! We decided to be conservative and choose the 40 smile mile ride today, understanding that 40 miles […]

Today I awoke in a fairly comfortable hotel bed and thought, “What am I doing?” It started raining on the drive yesterday a few hours out of Staunton, which I had expected from the forecast. But it rained all evening, and having brought my road bike with the skinny, treadless tires, I was beginning to […]