Day 2

Waking up with slugs (everywhere but on myself) and freckles of rain on my face under a tree in a mini-forest in "Anytown," New Hampshire; Mariah and I loaded up our panniers and bikes, ate energy bars and set off for our first long day of biking. We biked 80 miles through light rain, grey skies, intense sun, heat, humidity and fog. We accidentally detoured through the Hamptons and realized we had gone the wrong way when a gentleman with a sweater tied around his neck gave us curt directions before he zoomed off in his Jaguar.

Before we went slightly off track at the Hamptons, we had (mostly) adhered to the adventure cycling route (which is a series of maps we bought online to get us across the country); but quickly ascertained that it was the best route for us to waste a lot of time in small towns on short surface roads. We have since decided to stick to highways and bike trails.

Luckily, while eating a snack outside a grocery store after biking 75-ish miles in Mass. we met a woman who directed us to a bike path that cut our final distance in half (5 miles instead of 10 miles) and meant that we ran into our Ayer, Mass host family.

Julie, Henry and audacious young Aleister helped Mariah and I recharge, before we traveled to Providence, Rhode Island for Water Fire - a cleansing ceremony of 100 bon fires on the water's surface at the confluence of three rivers in downtown Providence. Crippled with exhaustion, I squinted out of lazy eyes onto the fires and enormous crowed in a daze with a half smile while the crowd grew and then thinned until we decided to leave.

Finally, Mariah and I have spent most of the day with Julie and Henry sculpting a new route that will shorten the distance we must travel to get to Nevada. Our new daily goal is 65 miles a day, to get to Denver/Boulder, CO by July 4th and then 40 miles a day to get to Reno, NV by July 29th. We still plan to bike south to Baltimore, MD and D.C., but will head west there, instead of biking further down the coast to West Virginia. We're absolutely stoked on our new route, it means we get to live while riding our bikes cross-country, instead of just cranking out the miles.