Thursday, August 5 – Day 53 – 71.7 Miles – 4044.3 Total Miles

35 Miles to go!!!! We pulled off Day 53 without incident – minus one little detour. It only added about 2 miles to our route, so in the big picture, not a huge deal. We did manage to get in one last ride with heavy traffic. The majority of our ride tomorrow is on a bike path (no cars) and the Colonial Parkway (low speed limit?), so hopefully we have seen the last of non-stop, speeding cars.

It is amazing how one’s riding shape and mentality improves over the course of a trip like this. Today, we are feeling like we had an off-day, with only 71 flat miles. I am sure that Bobby would admit that the 70 miles today felt a little different than 70 miles early in the trip. As I predicted, his 22 year old legs got stronger and stronger throughout the trip. My 44 year old legs did not change too much….Kyle….the jury is out on his legs. I think he is feeling stronger, though. He has gone from talking about putting his bike away for the year on his Ohio return, to talking about maintaining his form and riding when he gets home. His couch potato days may be a thing of the past.

On the ride today, I was thinking about many different things, but there was one in particular. I can remember many times on this trip where I would look at a course profile or a particular warning on our map about an area. The area in question would be a couple of days away and I would worry about the possible difficulties. Then, three days later, we would be through that area. Sometimes the warnings were accurate, but most of the time….I would pass through the area and not even remember what the potential problems were. That process was repeated a number of times….with no warning ever turning out to be as big as I, or someone else, made it out to be. It seems I do that a lot in everyday life. I always make a big deal out of an upcoming event…to later find out that it was blown out of proportion and all of the worrying was wasted energy. That was deep.

We are in Williamsburg tonight. Bobby’s parents are also going to be in town. It will be neat that they get to see their son’s finish tomorrow at Yorktown. I am not sure what Bobby is more excited about….seeing his parents or getting to sleep in a bed tonight in their room. The Dunns have kind of hogged all the beds in the hotel rooms. Before you say anything, Kim and I are getting old….Kyle and Bobby are both young and flexible. Kim’s brother is also going to make his way up from Virginia Beach to see our finish. We are excited about spending a couple of days with him and his wife.

Well, we are going to get out and walk around Colonial Williamsburg for awhile. We have put it off until now (6:00 pm) because of the heat. It is close to 100 degrees, so it would have been brutal to go out for a walk when we got here. God-willing, we will update from the end of the route tomorrow. Until then…….




Capital Trail Bike Path That We Spent Some Time On Today

One Of Many Battlefields That We Passed Today