Massachusetts

A good motel gives you breakfast in the morning and the best motel provides a do-it-yourself waffle iron and a huge vat of maple syrup. The Rodeway Inn and Suites is such a motel and we both enjoyed giant waffles before setting off for the day. We rode horses for the first 15 miles. No, we rode bikes. Surprise! The first 5 miles were flat, which gave us just enough time to realize how pleasant it would be to have no hills before we resumed climbing and descending again.

At a town called Crystal Lake we stopped for a break. The town has a lovely park with many picnic benches alongside a beach on the south side of the lake. Unfortunately we couldn't go in there because the good residents of the town have seen fit to erect a high chain-link fence around their park to keep the riffraff out. "Hey honey, look at this great beach!" "Quick, put a fence up before other people get in!" We were not impressed and stopped at the lake in a dewy shaded cold spot that left us with soggy bike shorts. Later we broke into a library (they left their door unlocked) to use their bathroom.

Today was originally going to be 65 miles so we applied one of our patented shortcuts and whittled it down to 58 miles. We later applied another shortcut to our first shortcut (double shortcut bonus!) and made it into a 56 mile day. Midway though our shortcut we stopped at McDonalds for some snacks and to investigate campsites for the evening. In an effort to appeal to millenials McDonalds now has touchscreens for ordering your food and the employees will bring your food to your table. They get points for the ideas but none for execution. It took 15-20 minutes for fries and a milkshake to appear and during this period a time vampire appeared. A time vampire is someone who will suck away your time and give you nothing in return. This person carried on while we nodded politely, hoping he would pick up on the hint that we were not terribly interested in a conversation. Then our food arrived and got cold while the vampire continued to tell us more things that we didn't need to know about. He eventually left and we called campsites for the evening. We settled on Sutton Falls campground since they were the cheapest of the two that answered the phone. Sutton Falls was a great campground. We made friends with our neighbours in an RV and later joined them at a campfire. We shared our s'mores supplies and ate far too many.

This morning we continued riding through Massachusetts towards Boston. We had a good break at the Indian Head Farm where we bought apple cider (for us) and strawberry jam (for our hosts tonight). Another break took place in the town of Harvard where Mike visited a bike shop to buy some tubes. The proprietor wouldn't accept any money and gave those to us for free. We tried to buy a patch kit from him but he gave that to us free as well so we left before we put him out of business. Today was noticeably flatter than previous days.

Towards the end of the day our Warm Showers host Gary rode out to meet us 15 miles from his house. We're glad he did as he took us past a number of historical sites and showed us some shortcuts to get around evening rush hour traffic. He even pointed out a house that was on the TV show "This Old House". Mike loves that show. We had a great dinner with Gary and his family in Bedford and we are looking forward to a good night's sleep.

Rach broke into this library

Plant sale fundraiser

Indian Head Farm - this place was awesome!