Chapter 28: And the Rain Keeps Coming

Day 20: Thursday, July 13, 2017
64 miles

Brighton State Park to Brighton State Park, Vermont

We woke up to rain, hardly a surprise. But we were dry and comfortable as we ate our usual breakfast of oatmeal, raisins, and walnuts in our lean-to, where there was plenty of room to spread out, even with our tent and bicycles inside. My hot tea cooled to luke warm as we watched the rain come down and talked about our options.

Now that we were clearly headed in the direction of home, we still had flexibility in our schedule. The only definite was a doctor's appointment Rob had in a week, something he couldn't miss as he'd be leaving for his sabbatical in Australia at the beginning of August. I had brought along the directions for a loop ride from our Best Bike Rides New England book. (The book is out of print but you can get it cheap from Amazon.) It's called the "Northeast Kingdom Challenge" and we were sitting right along its 59 mile route. Riding it had been our plan for today. But it was raining.

Our conversation went something like this.

Me: "What do you want to do?"

Rob: "I don't know."

We sat and watched the rain come down.

Me: "We could go into town and see if there's a coffee shop or library where we could hang out."

Rob: "We could."

We sat and thought about that idea.

Me: "I don't really want to pack up and ride somewhere else and have to set up again in the rain."

Rob: "Me neither."

Me: "Well, let's at least get breakfast cleaned up and then decide."

We rode the three miles into town with our indecision still fully intact. We couldn't find a library or an appealing coffee shop. We stopped at the post office to mail home our Quebec maps. And the rain matched our unrelenting indecision with its unrelenting decisiveness.

"I don't really want to hang out at the campsite all day. You want to just go ahead and do the ride?" I asked Rob while we were still inside the post office.

"Sure." 

Anticipating riding in the rain is worse than the actual fact of riding in the rain. As long as it's not a cold rain, and it wasn't. And we had the added benefit of riding without our heavy panniers. The next day I wrote in my journal: "Great ride yesterday...Rained for the first part to East Burke, then cloudy, then drizzle."

Shelter from the rain.

The rain took a break while we rode past Lake Willoughby. If the sun had been out we probably would have stopped for a swim. But we contented ourselves with the view and the break from the rain.

By the time we arrived back at our campsite around seven o'clock, the rain had stopped. We had picked up some food in Island Pond and cooked up probably the best dinner of the trip so far - scrambled eggs with onion, sausages, red pepper, potatoes, and a little salsa.

Although the ride had "challenge" in its name, we didn't find it to be difficult at all, just a beautiful ride through northern Vermont. But there were a fair number of hills and after heading down one of them Rob said, "My rear brake isn't working."