Day 5 - First day to cook

We had a big day today.  We rode a total of 66 miles and had the same hills. We started at about 8:00 this morning and we all finished between 2:45 and 6:30 this afternoon/evening.  We are staying at a campground in Brunswick, Maine.  We spent the day going through all these port towns and the harbors in each of these towns were absolutely beautiful.  I didn’t have a lot of time to sightsee because today I was assigned to cook.  That means that I need to arrive fairly early to camp and me and another person (Bill from Massachusetts (we have three Bills)) go shopping for the dinner that we cook and we buy the items that will be needed for breakfast and lunch the next day.  We do carry the leftover food that doesn’t require refrigeration so we somewhat have to take an inventory of what we have the morning we cook.  We made this baked bean dish (with Bish’s baked beans, not cooked from scratch) and added chili sauce, onions, garlic and hamburger.  We also had salad and cookies for desert.  I learned a saying when I was in Korea that “hunger is the seasoning”.  Everyone thought the meal was delicious, but I attribute it more to the hunger.

I ran into some Mormon missionaries today.  That was kind of fun.  They were just wandering the streets of a little city that we rode through and I spent a few minutes talking to them about their experience and about Maine and the people and all.  They also seemed interested in the fact that we were all riding to Key West.

The tour tries to take us on roads that are away from the most traveled roads, but does try to take us to the scenic spots.  One drawback of that is the fact that the most busy roads are more leveled out.  The side roads have had no effort made to them to keep them level at all and the hills on some roads are steep.  I am carrying about 60 lbs. including the group gear and I tell you, sometimes it is all I can do to get to the top of the hill.  I am breathing like I am going to pop a lung.

Well I have my first Sunday School lesson.  Yesterday I wrote about breaking down.  I was so stressed about getting things fixed and getting done that day.  I ended up fitting things back together that I think makes the bike more sturdy and strong and today the bike handled so much better.  Before the rack in back would sway when I turned quickly and it was sometimes hard to keep the bike under control, but today it just seemed so much better.  You know God gives us trials in life and many times when we get through the rough time, we have made our life so much better because of the changes we made.  We maybe are cursing the problem at one time and look back and the problem ended up making things better.  Strange??

I need to hit the hay.  Everyone turns in pretty quickly in this group.  Goodnight.