Day18, Berea to Harrodsburg

Start time: 08.00
Start location: Berea
Start State: Kentucky
Start weather: Clear
Total millage so far: 864.73


Finish time: 12.30
Finish location: Harrodsburg
Finish State: Kentucky
Finish weather: Sunny
Miles today: 53.91
Total millage so far: 918.64
Today's top speed: 37.9
Today's average speed:  13.2

Music played:
Derek B - Bullet From A Gun
DJ Gonzalo - Juicy Summer Mix Vol 4
DJ Prime Cuts - Hip Hop Don't Stop The Greatest

Blog for this day:  

With no Ollie to start the day off with, things felt very different.  Now we are ten riders, the group feels so much smaller.   We had breakfast on campus again, I was hopping for some kinda National Lampoons Animal House food fight, but it didn’t happen.  Oh well.  But I’ve got to find some film cliche or story that I can reenact!  Now we are in Kentucky the bike route 76signs have ceased which is a shame as they really helped, as did the maps with the letters designated to help at tough road junctions.  The ride itself was pretty amazing, it had to be one of the best of recent days.  The scenery was breath taking in places, it was hard to cycle because I kept stopping to take photo’s. 

Like the other day, I passed loads of elder flowers perfect for the taking.  The scenery is changing quickly now as we head west.  Gone are the steep climbs and high mountains of over 3000ft, now we seem to be on rolling hills which are great to cycle on.  If you get enough speed up, you can just roll over them one after the other.  The roads in general have been pretty dam good today.  Lovely grey tarmac with bright orange double lines to ride along while chatting.  I saw a couple more groundhogs messing about next to a garden shed, they soon ran away which is a shame as I wanted to see them more closely and do my Dr Doolittle thing with them, like I do all the other animals I encounter on this trip.  Quite a lot of good quality horses about too in fields. 

The route today was a bit tricky in places but luckily a mailman, who earlier I caught driving along throwing papers or letters out the window onto peoples driveways, gave us directions as there was a tricky left hand turn.  Lovely downhill ride, but at the bottom were some pigs in a small pen and four loose crazy dogs.  We entered the gauntlet on mass and managed to confuse them, we escaped!

Later on in the day parts of the road were being resurfaced, so there is bound to be loads of tar stuck to my bike now!  The bits which had not yet been replaced were in a pretty bad state and my poor camera & bike rattled along for ages.  In the town we are staying, we popped to the showers up the road from the YMCA, yes I did play the music, another lady just adored my accent!  A bit like the lady in the post office yesterday.  They just wanted to hear me speak as they had never met anyone from England before lol, I felt a bit embarrassed.  They had been watching the jubilee celebrations on TV.  Some yocals yesterday were talking to us, there is a London close to where we are at the moment, so I had to say London England for near enough the first time so they knew where I was from.  Great fun.  Not sure I am loosing much weight though, certainly looking a bit more chubby which is not good!  Meant to be loosing fat on this trip.   There are some huge trains going through this town too.  First one I saw had three engines pulling it which seemed to go on for ever.  The latest train must have been a mile or more long.  The track snakes through the town and you can if you look up one street you can see it travelling past right to left, then if you look down the next street, at 45degrees, you can still see it moving.  Huge!!  I do like the sounds of the trains and their hooters, although if they are going to do that all night, it will drive me mad!  I managed to get the corner room at the YMCA by being one of the first here, woop woop. 

A couple more notes, really liked Berea and the campus, not much to do, but really laid back and chilled.  There seems to be lots of housing estates going up all over the place along the route.  Trees being pulled up and fields bulldozed.  These estates though, are going up in the middle of nowhere and I can’t see who will buy them as there are no jobs nearby, if there were any jobs!  Like I’ve written before, there are all these dying small towns about which used to have industry, but now that’s all gone, they cant survive, so I have no idea what the use is of building these new places.  Not sure what else happened, so much does  and it can be so hard to remember.  It’s going to be so sad going back to work and not having this constant daily adventure.  I am just so lucky to be doing this, I still have to pinch myself so I can can a step back and see what it is I am actually seeing.  Nothing will ever compare to this great trip.  Even though it has been tinged with great sadness and loss, it still goes on.  What will I do when I get back to London.  Will I have changed, will I want to stay at my job?  I may want a complete change, any jobs going at ACA?  I don’t want to give up when I reach Oregon.  Who knows what will have happened by then.  Am I enjoying this trip, f*cking A I am.  The crappy weather at times, bad drivers, long days and bad knees are worth it when you come over the crest of a hill after being chased up it by a dog, to see perfect blue sky's, mowed grass and not another living person within sight.  Just you and your bike.  I’m not sure I feel like an adventurer of the type of Lewis & Clark, but only a few hundred people attempt this each year, a low percentage don’t complete it, so there certainly is some kudos in doing this trip. (check back next week as I may be cursing and swearing about this adventure lol).  Anyone reading this and thinking shall I or shan't I, I would say yes, do it, do it now, have an adventure, enjoy life.

(did i write about the crazy taxi driver where I thought i was going to be cut up into tiny pieces?)