Day 48 – Brattleboro, VT, to Burlington, MA, 90.2 miles, 4,530 ft of elevation gain.
Not the best start to my day: just as we were rolling out from the hotel this morning, I discovered that I had not downloaded the day’s route into my Garmin bike computer. Therefore, no GPS guidance like I’d been using the last 47 days. CRAP! So, my plan was to stick close to other riders all day to keep on the route. But once I got rolling, I remembered I have an app on my phone that has the routes available, so I got that running and all was well.
But what I didn’t count on was, since my phone was turned on for the ride, it was running down my phone’s battery. Naturally, I didn’t discover this until my phone’s battery was pretty low. CRAP, v2.0! Fortunately, my battery was just running out as I neared the end of the ride – in fact, in the parking lot of the hotel it was still calling out the directions, but when I got checked in and found my room, the battery was dead. What timing!
The other wonderful thing with today’s ride was knowing that Amy, JD and Jake would be greeting me at the hotel when I arrived! But – about noon I received a text from Amy (who’d told me on the phone last night she hadn’t felt 100% and had a scratchy throat), that she had tested positive for covid! CRAP again! So when I arrived we had a socially distanced celebration in the parking lot. So frustrating to be that close but still not huggable!! They will be at the beach tomorrow morning for the wheel dip, but they did not attend this evening’s celebratory banquet.
Regardless of all that, the ride itself was a good one. There was a good bit of climbing (over 4,000 ft) and plenty of twists and turns as we neared the hotel. A couple of the climbs had some pretty good grades (in the 11% range), so we had some sore legs by the time we finished.
Tomorrow morning we depart the hotel at 8 a.m. to make the sprint to Revere Beach for the wheel dipping!!
CYCLING AT A HIGHER LEVEL 
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