Blue Skies and Tailwinds

Here's the statistics: 42 days, 12 states, 37 motels, 104 beers, 35 peanut butter sandwiches and a total on my bike computer of 2478.2 miles. Whew! It seems like only yesterday we left on a windy day out of Fargo and here we are on a foggy day in Bar Harbor.
Today's ride was a treat in that at least half of the 46 miles were on freshly paved roads. What a treat! Made up for the 4000 pot holes the day before. We rode back roads through green pine forests with minimum traffic except the two areas where there was major construction. Bad winter weather makes for bad roads so the few months they have to fix them are now. We have been through lots of construction sites in the past few weeks.
We now have to take our bikes to the Bar Harbor Bike Shop to have them disassembled and sent to our respective cities. They got some good business today!
Tradition is that you dip your front wheel in The Atlantic when you finish the ride. We all rode single file through the town( people were staring!) and rode to the beach where we all followed tradition.
We then went to our motel to pack for the journey home. The WOWS were very lucky in that our good friends Pat T and Jan B sent us a congratulation present-some beers and wine which we shared with some of our friends as we packed.
Dinner tonight was a Maine lobster feast! We all donned our bibs and chowed down. We toasted each other with champagne then said our farewells. Sadly I will probably never see most of these ladies again. We lived, rode, cocktailed, shared stories, and ate together for 6 weeks so we became " cycle sisters". There will be a lot of memories we all will take home. We all agree that our bodies need a rest. Knees are starting to ache, saddle sores are not healing, backs are aching, and we are getting tired of the same clothes.
If I had the opportunity to do a ride like this again I would do it in a heartbeat! To spend days just riding your bike and not having a care in the world, somebody making your meals, making your bed, enjoying mother nature at her best and her worst, enjoying new friendships, and knowing your retirement check is in the mail for next month's bills is the way to go. But it is time to get back to the real world.
Thank you for listening to all my ramblings and your wonderful support. To know your friends and family were behind you on this adventure meant a lot to me.
I am looking forward to being home and taking it easy for awhile. Until I see you again I wish YOU - blue skies and tailwinds .
Signing off............Donna

Sent from Donna's iPad