59.2 miles
3.53.09 st
15.2 avg
TTD-2742.28
We left at 8:45, a little later than normal. but we slept until almost 7:00, which was also later than normal. The 86 mile ride yesterday must've taken more out of us than we thought.
We got back onto Lakeshore and were cruising along quite nicely when Gerry suddenly braked - a library! right there in front of us! THAT just hasn't happened. It was 9:30 and there were very few people on the computers, so we took advantage of it. If we waited another day or two, the updating would be overwhelming. It took about two hours, a little longer than I had hoped, but it was good to get caught up.
When we came out, we talked with a guy who was looking over the bike. He was helpful as we talked about the route we were riding today and was able to give us a couple shortcut tips. (We wished later that he had given us a shortcut tip for the route through Painesville; maybe we could've avoided the sharp drop and extremely steep climb back up from the river. )
In a sense, we were now two hours behind, so we hit it hard through Mentor and Grand River to Painesville. It was a minor miracle that we made it that far because there was a detour that sent us off route, then Paddles messed up again, but somehow we managed to find ourselves right where we needed to be a few miles later.
After the climb out of Painesville, we actually rode for several miles in the country. Near Perry, we stopped at a little ice cream shop. We were VERY hot and needed some air conditioning to get our body temps down. The Flurry also helped to do that. ;o)
We left the marked AC route near Perry and stayed on hwy 20 to Madison, where we turned north on 528 to get back to the route on the lake. Then Paddles messed with us again becaused we took another wrong turn before we got to Geneva-on-the-Lake. We sternly warned him that he was going to ride inside the pack if he didn't shape up. We missed another turn shortly after that because the street was signed differently than the map listed. Not Paddles' fault.
Nine more HOT miles to Ashtabula. In town we stopped at a gas station for something cold to drink and ask about camping and motels. There was no camping, but he said there was a motel down the road, back where we just came from. Nope, we don't go backward. A customer intervened and told us of another place that was on our route out tomorrow.
So we landed at the Edge-O-Town motel, another older one but quite nice and very clean. She even gave us an "On-a-strict-budget-tired-hot-sweaty-biker" discount. 
The downside was that we couldn't take the bike and trailer into the room because of new carpet. But she did let us put it in a locked garage and gave us the remote.
After showers and rinsing out our clothes, Gerry went across the street and brought back a 44 oz. Mountain Dew for himself and a 44 oz. Icee for me. 44 oz.! In real life, I don't drink Icees. And I don't drink 44 oz. But I did today! And tonight, we had chicken spaghetti! A good change from tuna.
We're loving the riding, seeing new things, talking with people, etc. And we are grateful and thankful for God's provision for this life-adventure. But I'm also realizing that I'm really missing our house and yard and family and friends.
How can we even begin to thank you all enough for your prayer and care and concern for us? We sense it every day and it humbles us.
Safe in His hand,
Gerry and Pat
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