Bike Trip - Day 17

At 6 AM, I refused to believe it was 6 AM and tried to sleep through Tim's pokes and tickles, failing miserably. It was therefore time to wake up. We couldn't even get the motel door open from the inside, so Tim had to climb out the window and smash the door open from outside. Very kung fu movie. I packed up my bike and went outside and saw Dennis feeding a cute little cat leftover pizza. Dennis had seen how nervous Jim had made me about the dogs, so he gave me some Halt! since he had other methods of protection. I really don't want to use the stuff, but I'm relieved that I have it because of all the scary stories I've heard. At least now if a dog tries to kill us, I have some defence. We all set off around 7:30 AM. I love the early morning starts because it's so nice to have 30 to 40 miles under your belt when you sit down for lunch, rather than a meager 10 miles. There were some really tough mountains where it would be a steep switch backing journey up the side of the mountain that fools you into thinking the summit just has to be at the end of the next turn. It never is. Finally, when you feel like you've climbed all the way to heaven, the it ends, and you have a huge rushing descent down the other side. It always feels amazing! It was pretty tough riding today and we got about 47 miles out and realized that the motel on our left was the last place to stay for 40 more miles. The next 40 miles had four large climbs, so we decided to stay. All of a sudden we notice Dennis and a second biker riding up the hill. They had also decided to call it a day so we all got rooms and settled in. The new biker was Marc Deluca, who is a retired police major from North Carolina. We all decided to walk into town for dinner at a cafe. I wanted pulled pork, but they were out. I had a burger instead because everything else was deep fried or sea food. After a nice dinner, we all wandered back to the hotel and retired for the night.

Time with Tim!
It rained last night, and the motel door froze up. I couldn't open it from the inside because I only had the knob to pull on. I climbed out our window wondering if I would have thought of the window had there been a fire at 2 AM. Once outside, I dropped a shoulder and hit the door like it owed me money. It opened and we were on our way. Perry found me a dog-fending stake today. I sheathed it in my trailer so I can reach it with either hand in case of a dog attack. We are both kinda scared about dog attack. Today we had some wicked hills and we stopped at 48 miles because the next campground was 40 miles away over more wicked hills. We are at a motel with two other cyclists, Dennis and Marc. They informed us that the last group going our way (2 days ago) a pig attacked a girl's bike and ripped up one of her panniers. I guess our next to days will be dog (and pig) ridden, my stick is ready. We had gobs of fried, greasy good, but the shear quantity of shrimp consumed more than made up for this.