This was the longest day and definitely the hardest. We started out with easy hills and thought that we would be able to handle these hills no problem. We were wrong. The hills that we had to climb later that day were much worse than we had expected. But we all managed to scale them none-the-less.
We stopped at a church about half way for lunch and a little relaxation (See Day 1, Part 2 pictures). Kim skipped this stop and we didn't see him go by. So he got a good lead on us while we were waiting for him even though he had already passed us.
The Bike Master's crew also stopped here and I spent some time chatting with them.
Not only did we scale some impressive hills, but we had a decent head wind in our face for about 3/4 of this ride. Nothing major, but still enough to sap a little extra energy and make the ride feel just that little bit harder.
Upon arriving in camp, Tony went to work on us to help us recover from a long ride. We spent that night eating, relaxing, and watching an impressive storm roll in (which pounded us while we slept that night).
One funny story on Sunday was when I was eating dinner at the local fire station. While I was eating, a 27 year BRAN veteran (the only one that I know of) came out of one of the rooms at the fire house. It turns out he got permission to take a shower there. A wise move since the high school water heater had been shut off for the summer and we had to take cold (and I mean hypothermia cold) showers after the ride. Well, the firehouse shower definitely had warm water and he was very happy to have been able to use it. As he was getting ready to leave he pointed out his towel. As he tells it "My family worries about me while I'm on BRAN. They know I can get a bit confused by the end of the week. So they gave me this towel so that I don't make any embarrassing mistakes." Half of his towel was white and half was brown. The white side had "FACE" written in big bold letters. The brown side had "BUTT" written on it in big bold letters. We all had a good laugh. I also learned bran secret number 1: The officially provided showers are not the only showers available in the host towns.
Phil packing his tent at 5:15am
Kim checking his water supply
Kim on the road
Phil on the road...and my shadow on Phil
Mark on the move
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