Sunday, October 12, 2014

This is how you beat the Vermont mountains

Sunday, October 12.  Williston to St. Johnsburg

Another 70 mile day.  This one with a very satisfying result.
 
Started with a good breakfast, and pushed off at 8:40.  Nine hours later, we had arrived at the outskirts of St. Johnsburg, discovering the highway up the hill to the town was under construction.  We called the bed and breakfast where we had reservations, and were informed by the owner that she had no information showing we had reservations, and she had no room available.  Imagine the shock and frustration!  But we had stopped at the intersection adjacent to Fairbanks Inn.    Luckily, there was a vacancy – a king, nonsmoking!  Also, because the local pizza place delivers and has gluten free pizza, guess what we had for dinner! 
 
Today we had no mechanical difficulties or flats.  We rode strong, notwithstanding the hills.  Diane now classifies hills into four categories – rollers, riders, crawlers, and walkers (Rob has suggest one other category - Oh, hell no.  We didn’t have any walker hill!  We had a few rollers and several crawlers (the kind that are 2-mile long pulls with  passing lanes and require usage of our lowest gears), but most hills today were “riders” – that is, moderate quarter-mile hills that do not require your lowest gears.   
 
The scenery was absolutely spectacular.  The temperature was about right for the vigorous activity—on the warm side going uphill and on the cool side going down.  We enjoyed a too-leisurely lunch at a picnic table adjacent to and provided by a general store.  Too leisurely, because by the time we arrived St. Johnsburg, it was close to sunset.  At one of our rest stops after a crawler, about ten miles from our destination, a young man on a mountain bike appeared, seemingly out of nowhere.  He was biking a new trail, not yet completely surfaced, that goes into St. Johnsburg.  He recommended we take it for the next two miles, which we did.  This cut off one, and two thirds of another  crawler.  And then we began a very fast and cold eight mile descent into town. 
 
All in all a very successful day.  Tomorrow we leave Vermont, and spend one night in New Hampshire.
 
Early in the day we rolled through farmlands and by the pumpkin stands.
 
 
Your Fall colors shot of the day.
 
Diane kicks butt in Vermont.
 
 


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