On the seventh day, they rested.

Stardate: Oct 3, 2580

On the eighth day, they rode for a while, and then drank beer and watched college football in Standish, Maine. And they also ate seared ostrich. Short of winning the lottery, I struggle to imagine anything that could have made this day better (Editor’s note: Maine has a very…uhhh....interesting….song that they use to promote their lottery. Try searching “Maine lottery song.” Ugh).

The ride today was about 35 or 40 miles, but we were drenched in sun the whole way, and only had a handful of monster hills to tackle. A great day of riding makes for a rather boring blog post, so I’ll use this opportunity to discuss the finer points of touring on a bicycle: Mildewology 101.
First lesson: When you spend an entire week drenched from rain, your clothes, shoes, towels, duffle bags, etc. turn into a buffet for tiny microbes that eventually emit a very pervasive odor. There exists one (and only one) way to prevent this odor from becoming your scent of choice while on the road. USE DRY BAGS! A “waterproof” duffle bag will not prevent your gear from getting wet and stinky. Before we left, we picked up some dry bags at a boat supply store, and those have proven to be one of the best investments we have made so far. Our sleeping bags, pillows, and blankets are as dry as Ben Stein. So effective were these dry bags that I bought another one to house all of my clothes. Goodbye Stinkus-brand duffle bag. Hello luxurious dryness.

However, we’re still dealing with wet bike shoes, which appear to be an unsolvable problem. I guess we’ll just have to get used to squishing around whenever we’re off the bike.