eLIFELIST.com Bike Trip

Day 10 – Kentucky!

Even after a good nights sleep, in a bed, we still needed some Ibuprofen to loosen up the stiff muscles from the previous day’s climbing. We thought that the big meal from the night before would be some good fuel for the day as we planned on leaving the state of Tennessee.  After today I think we have come to a few additional conclusions. We are always going to get started later in the day than we thought we would. The terrain is ALWAYS going to be hillier than we estimate. We are always going to finish the day later than planned. And we will find someway to eat more than we possibly thought we could get in our stomachs.

Due to some routing issues, we did not encounter too many gas stations, restaurants, or really any place to grab some food around lunch time. So instead we plopped down at a backwoods railroad track and scavenged all the snacks we had in our bags and had ourselves a ‘Stand By Me’ moment at the railroad tracks throwing rocks at broken bottles over lunch.

After spending the whole day in Northeastern Tennessee and Southern Kentucky, we have also learned another valuable lesson and have a good rule to go by. People driving any truck prior to a 90’s model, a loud exhaust system you can hear from a half mile away, with super swamper tires, lots of Confederate flag stickers all over their truck generally aren’t too big of fans of cyclists. Also, everyone has a dog and I mean everyone. Fortunately, most of them are chained up or fenced in and I am a dog person too… Some of these dogs look possessed and think in their eyes our legs look like giant drumsticks.

Our last adventure of the day was dealing with a little more rain. Despite our best efforts to set a blazing pace and beat out the storm, we were accompanied by a thunderstorm for the last 10 miles of the day. After about 10 days, we already have had two days of rain, which is not looking good for our rain bet, for me at least…

-Brent

Camping in the Smokies and climbing to the top.