Sea-to-Sea NA Day 35 The lobby of the residence we stayed in last night is full of people at 6 AM and many of them are wearing raincoats. Many thoughts run through you’re head then; rain on the longest day, it’s a long way to breakfast, what about the bags we left outside overnight? Going outside it was raining pretty hard and the temperature was cool – better get the leg warmers out. I rode the bike to breakfast and by the time we finished that the rain had subsided quite a bit. I got on the road about 6:30 and promptly missed the second turn, realizing my error a mile down the road. Riding in the rain with sunglasses on you can’t see the markings on the road. Sunglasses came off and stayed off for the rest of the day. I don’t know why I missed the turn latter on again but I ended up on a 4-lane highway. I figured that I would stay on it if it was going my way but then it turned south and just as it did, two cyclists crossed the highway in front of me- that must be the road- so I followed them. For the rest of the trip I watched for road markings and strained my eyes to read the print on the guide map. The rain turned into a light rain, the kind that doesn’t get you wet when exercising because your body heat evaporates it almost right away. This serves to keep you cool and as a result I didn’t drink very much water at all but this also raised another problem; that of having to go to the bathroom. Three hours into the ride, just as I was going to head into the cornfield, there was Corrie and his portable outhouse. I watched my odometer turn over 100km, more cornfield and more calf operations (you can smell them before you see them). By this time I had passed most of the riders, either on the road or at rest stops. The rain had subsided and the wind was shifting to a tail wind. I realized this because of the speed I was riding at. You see my leg effort is pretty constant, you shift gears to keep the pedal RPM constant and so your speed changes according to the terrain and wind. I kept track of the time trying to eat something every half hour. Today for the first time on this tour I managed to eat a peanut butter sandwich while riding. On previous days my mouth would be too dry but today it worked fine. By 150km I had a good tail wind when traveling east, the primary direction for the day, but we did have to change to north or south to connect the paved roads. The ride ended at 184 km and a riding time of 6.2 hrs for an average of just under 30kph. The favourable winds made it a pleasant ride into camp and pretty well everyone made it in before 7 PM. Tomorrow is another ride of the same length but judging by the sky now it will be sunny and thus hotter.