Day 67 - Wed, Jul 30, Brattleboro, VT to Nashua, NH

Day 67 - Wed, Jul 30, Brattleboro, VT to Nashua, NH
74.3 miles
5.31.08 st
13.4 avg
TTD-3408.28 mi

When we left at 7:45, the shifting was rough, making me a bit uptight as I thought about the climbing we had coming up.

We stopped at a grocery store on the way out of town for some food. After some shopping, we rode around the parking lot to work on the shifting issue before starting the climbs. We rode and adjusted, rode and adjusted but couldn’t get it right.

Then Gerry noticed that the shift cable (different from yesterday's) was “hanging on by a thread”. It had frayed all the way down to only one wire. We had no choice but to head back into town to the bike shop as we didn't have a spare. This was a slight challenge because we couldn’t shift off the middle ring (that new middle ring) for the hills.

It was about 8:45 when we got to the first bike shop, but they didn’t open until 10:00. Gerry walked down the block to the other one (Burrows Specialized Sport) and saw that it opened at 9:00, so we wheeled the bike down there.

They were just opening the store when we got there and told us to bring the bike right in.
Tim replaced the shift cable then Joe came in, put the bike on the stand and took over. He worked on adjusting the shifting for quite a while. We need to replace the front derailleur when we get home; it’s pretty worn and has too much play in it. That’s partly why it’s so hard to shift up to the big ring. He also saw that the brake pads were worn almost to the metal, so he replaced those also. He checked everything else for us also.

So, four different repairs on three days in a row. What else can happen? (You'll see below)

We were able to ride out of town at 10:00, not too bad considering all that was done to the bike. When we crossed the bridge into New Hampshire and were grinding up the hill, we looked up and saw Bob (our host last night) standing up there. He had passed us several minutes earlier and stopped to talk to us.We noticed yesterday how friendly the people in Brattleboro are. People smiled at us on the street; Bob’s fellow riders treated us as one of them; as we were riding on Main Street to the bike shop a lady rolled down her window and said, “Welcome to Brattleboro!”; as we were waiting for the bike shop to open, people smiled and said, “Good morning”; one guy stopped and said, “You were at the Top of the Hill Grill last night, weren’t you?” Then he talked with us for several minutes about the route we were taking out of town; the guys in the shop were very nice; a customer in there talked with me about BOB. We surely will remember this town for its friendly people.

We had two big climbs into Dublin before coming down to Peterborough. We knew we had another bigger climb out of there before Milford, so we stopped in Peterborough for some ice cream. We found Ava Marie’s Chocolates and Ice Cream…ymmmm! Gerry had a bowl of Moosetracks and Maine Black Bear (raspberry ice cream with chocolate covered raspberry truffles). I had Maine Black Bear and Death By Chocolate (dark chocolate ice cream, milk chocolate swirled in, chocolate truffles, brownie pieces). I figured it was either die on the mountains or die by chocolate. I choose chocolate!

Peterborough is just on the other side of the fold on our map, and when we turned the map for the next section….TA DA….there was the ocean too! The end is in sight!
Out of Peterborough, we had one more big climb, bigger than the last two. (Man, we were glad we had that ice cream.) When we crested the top at Temple Mountain, we were pretty spent. Gerry estimated that we climbed somewhere around 5000 feet today.

From there, it was downhill all the way into Milford. Aaahh, a nice reward.

In Milford, we stopped to ask about lodging and were told there was only one not-so-nice motel, but there were several better ones down the road ten miles into Nashua.

It was 4:00. Yeah, we could make it by 5:00. We rode past lots of shopping and an accident, but no motels. Earlier, we had prayed together for the Lord to show us where He wanted us to be for the night. Here we are at the ten miles, and we’re not seeing anything. Finally, we rode past a Crowne Plaza. Mmmmm, nope, we knew that one did NOT fit the budget. Another two miles and we saw a Best Western. Hmmm, most likely not a fit either. A half mile past that and we were in a residential area, so back to the Best Western we went. At this point we were exhausted and starting to not care what it would cost.

We were pleasantly surprised when a room here was less than the crummy “fish motel” back in New York! Once again, God answered our prayer above what we had envisioned. Even as I write this, I tear up thinking of how He chooses to bless us in so many different ways. Why? Simply because of His great love.

This was an accident that we rode by between Milford and Nashua.As we were going to the room, we saw that BOB had another flat. Sigh. What else. But, no big deal, we have all evening and tomorrow to fix it. That’s right – day off tomorrow! We’ve just finished four hard days, three in the mountains and dealing with repairs.

It’s amazing what a nice, long shower can do for our state of mind. It feels like it washes more than just the road grit and sweat down the drain. It washes down some of the fatigue and stress also.

Gerry fixed the last pasta, tuna and spuds for dinner, then we had some fudge for dessert.

We've been asked several times about why we're not camping now. It's pretty simple:

1) severe thunderstorms forecast each afternoon and evening (all through New York)
2) campgrounds or RV parks are few and far between on our route
3) we're tired and it's a lot of work to set up and pull down each day

So, there you have it.

Smelling the salt air,
Gerry and Pat