Day 2 of the Tour de Cure

Start	Finish	Distance
Durham, NH	Biddeford, ME	75 miles

Day 2 is now done. Here we are in Biddeford, ME., at the University of New England. The ride today was supposed to be 75 miles (see above) but the actual count on the cue sheet was 74.3. So they are making up for the 8 mile overage yesterday by lopping off a whopping 0.7 miles today. Excellent.

Today's ride was mainly up the coast from Durham to Biddeford. And I'd just like to start out by voicing my appreciation for whoever it was the decided that the ocean should be at sea level. That was really excellent planning. For biking it means that as you ride along the coast, the ride is basically flat. This is a good thing unless you are trying not to get lulled into a sense of complacency because you know that, soon, you will be riding in ski-resort county (Killington, for example) which will be a lot of hills. I've been thinking all day about why people keep putting ski resorts in the mountains, and I still don't get it. I'm sure it's just to be mean to cyclists.

But, enough time later to complain about hills. Today there really weren't any. From the last rest stop (mile 53) to the end of the ride, though, there was a brutal headwind. I really, really don't like headwinds. Oh, and it turns out that cursing at them doesn't help at all. At least, it doesn't make them go away. FYI.

We started out this morning around 7:30 from UNH. They keep us from leaving any earlier by withholding the cue sheets. I gather that they don't want us to arrive at the rest stops before the people working there. But this is kind of a pain, because I think lot of the people on this ride are used to getting up and riding early in the morning, and by 7:30 there was nearly a full scale riot going. I was up at about 5:30 (it turns out that the mattresses in dorm rooms are not as comfortable as the liberal media would have you believe) and done with breakfast (which they opened at 6:30) by about 6:45.

Oh, a bit about the food. I'm not sure what happened to school cafeterias since I went to school in the late 1700's, but at least the cafeteria at UNH was pretty impressive, I thought. I remember going to our dining hall, and you walked in one door and had whatever choices were available in the several metal pans along the 10 feet of space until the door for the exit. The UNH dining hall had all of these different areas: a grill, a "European food" section -- which seemed to be what they called pasta, a stir fry section, a vegan bar, etc. And in the drink area, not only did they have this whole coffee dispenser thing, but one of the choices that you could dispense was Chai tea with milk. It was totally great. So dinner was fun, but at breakfast, which I don't usually eat, I ended up drinking like a gallon of Chai tea. Some people drink coffee to get themselves going in the morning, but I don't really like coffee (well, I like some coffee, but it's not what you usually get) so I drink tea because it's warm and tastes good. I think I forget that it's also caffeinated.

The point here is that by 7:30, loaded with a gallon of Chai, I was seriously hyper and ready to get out of there. With only a 75 mile day, there were a bunch of us done before 1:00, so with plenty of time to relax. We cruised up the coast and through towns like Welles, Kennebunk, and Kennebunkport. We did go right past the HW Bush estate, and that was the excitement for most people, but for me it was that we actually went down Parson's Beach Road in Welles (or Kennebunk, I can't remember). We actually know the Parson family, and we've spent a lot of nice vacations at their house on Parson's Beach. I hadn't looked at the cue sheet carefully, so when I realized that I was just about at their house, I was pretty surprised. Although it always seems like a bit of a trip to get there, I must say (and I know this will come as a shock) that it takes much longer to bicycle there than it does to drive there.

As I was riding today, I realized that a lot of what's going on with me and this ride is a psychological game. When I ride a long ride in one day, for example a 100 mile ride, I try and ignore the mileage until I get to about mile 25. Otherwise it just seems too long. Like if you say "ok, I've gone 5 miles, just another 95 to go!", that doesn't work. So I try and avoid looking for the first 25 miles. The next 25 are the stage that takes me to halfway. Then up to about mile 80 is kind of the workout, and the final 20 miles is the home stretch. I've realized that with this multi-day ride I'm doing a similar thing, but with days. So I'm basically discounting the first 2 days in my mind. They are like a warm up. The next 3 days (so starting to tomorrow) is the heart of the ride, and the last 2 days are heading home. So just in case you are wondering what I'm thinking, now you probably know. Unless I just made that up just now.

I think I'm done for today. More later. Thanks again for sponsoring me. I think that if I can continue to thank you, then I must be feeling OK. At some point, if I say "and what were you thinking sponsoring me? If you hadn't I'd be home now napping in the recliner." then you'll know that I've reached my limit.