Edmonton, KY

Today was a day where a lot more could have gone wrong. Luckily it didn't, so we are now lying in our comfy sleeping bags on Austin's lawn in Edmonton, Kentucky.

It started out well, an early start and a great all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet for $3.99 is a close to perfect beginning to the day. We rode at a decent pace up and down many hills, until at the bottom of one we came across two other guys with bikes. These guys had 3 times as much stuff as us, and on their bikes were all the possessions they had. They said that they aimed to live in the same manner as the early christians - sell all that they own and trust that the Lord will provide for them. We talked to them for a long time – a fun discussion about all things from learning Hebrew to stealing seatposts for bicycles.
We crossed the border from Tennessee to Kentucky at lunchtime today, the ninth state that we have visited on this trip. I should also mention that the clocks have changed, a very unusual occurrence – but good in that it means we are definitely moving west.

We rode on, along roads where there were more animals than cars (which makes a nice change). I saw a snake and some deer as well as another woodpecker, and there are now fields of cows and horses wherever we look. Our first obstacle was called Subtle Rd. The subtlety of this particular road became evident soon after we entered it, without the sign, it would not be called a road, more like a Himalayan trail for Tibetan Yaks. The locals said that they had never seen anyone bicycle up it, so I did. It was tough – and I finished all my remaining water going up it, in constant danger of falling off and of a puncture – it was an extremely steep hill, covered in gravel. Once we had made it over that hill, we had some pleasant views, and a nice run down along a more agreeable, less subtle road. The lucky bit was being forewarned about the subtle hill by the locals, if we hadn’t, we probably would have turned round on seeing it and done a 30 mile detour to get past it.

On the next hill after the run down, Alex’s chain came off and jammed extremely firmly between the cassette and the spokes. Despite a lot of yanking and levering and pulling, we couldn’t get his chain unstuck. Given that we were 1 mile away from a garage – Alex hitched a lift in a pickup, and I cycled up to meet him at the garage in Edmonton. It took a while, but we managed to fix it, and then headed off to find some food and some wifi to find a place to go. – note here how lucky we were to have a good supply of pick-ups to hitch with and a friendly garage with stacks of tools, open at 7pm on a Sunday.

We found the food, but no wifi access, so after a couple of burgers and yet another $10 massive Pizza, we were abit stuck. This is where things could have gone wrong again; we had nowhere to stay – the GPS said the nearest campsite was 20 miles, and the motels office was empty. Luckily, I got chatting to the employee’s of pizza hut, and sourced us a place for free and with wifi, Thank you so much to Austin for all your help.

Tomorrow we will ride 60 miles to Clarkson, then plot some new maps, and try another 20 miles. We have ridden 1570 kilometres, eaten 37 burgers, and I have a new top speed! 41.3mph or 66.4 kph. See below for what I say about yesterday, and what Alex says for the two days.