We rode through downtown Brattleboro one more time heading for the Connecticut river and another state line crossing. The day would see us going from Vermont, through New Hampshire and into Massachusetts for dinner. Again, I am surprised to see almost immediately the unique character of New Hampshire. We followed the Connecticut river for several miles, a very pleasant sight off to our right hand. Most of the land was forest with occasional houses and even more occasional small farms.
We picked up a series of smaller rivers and true to the overall geography any number of hills. None of the latter were as long as yesterday but several were in the 2/3 mile range and several quite steep. Two of them showed portions at 22% on my Garmin. Fortunately we had an overcast day but no real rain Our first SAG was in New Hampshire and a local man saw us in the parking area and came running up to warn us there was a black bear wandering up and down the highway - fortunately the bear was a mile or so up the cross road not on our route but it did give us something to think about for the next few miles.
And so at mile 41 we hit the Massachusetts state line: the last state crossing of a 3400+ journey. Massachusetts also very definitely has it's own personality. While we continued to get the hills and beautiful scenery in Western Mass we also noticed some changes. The roads generally were as bad, i.e. potholes, narrower shoulders, as anything I had seen since Ohio. And the drivers: rude and impatient and they only get worse as we approach Boston.
We went through Lexington and Concord, both very historic and quaint New England towns. Concord, by the way, was home to Ralph Waldo Emerson the 19th century poet/philosopher and his home is nicely preserved as a museum. Concord was about 10 miles from our destination hotel Burlington (northern suburb of Boston) and just as I took my final photo it started to sprinkle with very dark clouds looking like there was more on the way. The ancient streets in these old towns can sometimes be very confusing and that was certainly the case for me (and, I found out later a couple of others as well) and as the rain started to become a serious downpour I became very lost for the first time of the entire tour. I asked directions of everyone from UPS drivers to folks simply walking their dogs and, in hindsight, got some very unhelpful answers Long story short, I came upon a group of cyclists out for an after-work in the rain and after a couple of questions found they were headed for Burlington and invited me to join them. By this time the rain was simply pouring down, the streets were full of commuter traffic, and Susan was sitting at the hotel getting more frantic by the moment (and all I could do was one quick phone call to assure her I was OK and would make it in soon). In the end I did 102 miles (my very true century) and was in fact last one in for the day. I was a wet, sodden mess - the comparison to a drowned rat comes to mind. Needless to say I rushed to get a hot shower and used a substantial quantity of the Hilton's hot water reserves. And we did just a tad more climbing than the day before: 5700 feet. Some day, dinner with Susan and some wine for both of us was most welcome.
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