Into the Eastern Timezone

We got a late start this morning because of the fog. We ended up sitting around for about an hour and waiting for it to clear. On paper today should have been an easy day, just 60 miles, but it felt a lot longer. There was a noticeable (but not excessive) headwind all day. It’s also possible that my dinner last night of broccoli and curly fries might not have been the proper food to fuel a day of riding.

The ride was rather uneventful. We crossed into the eastern time zone.

One thing we’ve noticed is that drivers in Kentucky, more than anywhere else, take the solid yellow line in the road VERY seriously. The solid yellow line means you can’t pass and they will NOT pass a cyclist if there is a solid yellow line. Which is nice. But also frequently gets to the point of being ridiculous.

We’re spending the night at Lincoln Lodge, a motel outside of Hodgenville and across the street from Abraham Lincoln’s birthplace. This is the cutest motel we’ve stayed in yet. It’s styled like “Rustic meets Pinterest”. An inner wall looks like the outer wall of a log cabin. Because, Lincoln. Very charming. There’s a pizza food truck outside the motel tonight and it was very good!

Highlights

• pizza from the food truck by the motel
• there was some construction that caused the road to be closed briefly, during which we had a nice long chat with the construction worker who was directing traffic.
• the Dollar General we stopped at this morning had fresh blueberries. Fresh produce has not always been accessible from the stores we’ve shopped at on this trip. Our oatmeal tomorrow is going to be so good!

Lowlights

• at one point while we were going up a steep hill, Mike downshifted and somehow his chain popped off the sprocket in the front and also got wrapped around the front and rear derailleurs and it just got all-around knotted up. He abruptly came to a halt on the steep hill but luckily was able to stop himself from falling.
• the clothes we hand-washed last night were not dry by this morning so I put them in a mesh bag and strapped that on top of the dry sack on my rear rack. It’s not how I normally pack my bike and I must have done it poorly because roughly 15 miles in the dry sack fell off. So I had to stand on a busy, shoulderless road and muck about with all that.

Julie’s food

• Breakfast: oatmeal with blueberries and walnuts
• First Snack: cereal bar
• Lunch: peanut butter sandwich, Oreos
• Second Snack: Clif bar
• Dinner: veggie pizza, Oreos

Stats

• Total distance: 60.37 miles
• Elevation gain: 3,451 feet
• Weather: overcast, high of 62 degrees Fahrenheit