Day 7 - A Day That Keeps a Rider Riding

What a great day.  It rained pretty steady throughout the night and stopped about 6:00.  I actually slept really well.  That means that I must be getting pretty tired.  It is kind of odd here.  Even though it was raining, the night was rather warm.  There is one cyclist here that only brought a sheet sewed up like a sleeping bag insert and that is all he expects to use all the way to Florida.  I just laid on top of the bag for the entire night.  All of our tents and such were very wet and had to be loaded that way, but the skies were clear as we left camp for the day.  It was a beautiful ride today.  It was a wonderful break from the hills that we have had in the past.  We were a little inland and actually rode back toward the coast today and consequently rode a net downhill ride.  There weren’t many hills and not much wind and it was just great.  We rode a total of 40 miles and are now in Wells, ME.  Wells is one of the oldest communities in the Maine.  It was settled in 1643.  We haven’t seen much of the town today, but hope to visit a bit tomorrow morning.

As I was riding today, I passed a lumber yard that has a pile of plywood out front and had a sign on it saying,  “Hurricane Irene coming, are you prepared?”.  That felt a little eerie.  We are actually heading into Exeter, New Hampshire tomorrow (Yay, a new state) and will hole up in a motel while the storm passes over Sunday.  So that means two nights on an actual bed.  We do have to stay in the rooms, double occupancy, and most of the men snore, so we will see how that goes. One bad think about the unplanned stay is that we will probably have to miss our Boston layover.  We were to have a day to tour Boston, but to stay on track we will have to move on.  I was rather anxious to see the city.

Sunday School lesson #2 – As I was riding today enjoying the more level ride I began thinking about hills.  You know we ride at pretty much sea level for this entire trip.  I think the highest point that we ride is like 750 feet.  However, at one minute you are at 0 feet and then you are climbing to 250 feet and doing that time after time is pretty wearing.  It also takes 15 minutes to climb a hill and 3 minutes to go down, so it seems that you are always climbing.  Life can be the same way.  Going downhill is so fun and easy and fast, but if you go downhill, you must at some point climb back up to keep moving ahead.  Satan wants us to think that we can go through this life always enjoying a downhill ride of carefree, unending fun.  But he is wrong.  At some point for us to move ahead and accomplish things we must climb back up and that is where the work starts.  It isn’t easy to climb when we have ridden downhill for a while.  I think all of us have had to climb at times.  I know that God helps us climb as well, but there is wisdom in staying on level ground instead of looking for the thrills in this life that can make for some very hard days.  Wow, I better cut it out.  It is sounding like I am preaching a sermon.

I don’t think I mentioned that yesterday we visited the very first LL Bean store in Freeport Maine.  The store is huge.  It is pretty much a tourist attraction and there were a lot of people there.

This is what I see a lot of

The mosquitos are trying to eat me alive out here right now, so I am going to try and take cover in the tent.  Goodnight.