G.A.S.P.

The following day (5-8) I rode from Claremont, New Hampshire to Bennington, Vermont.  When I arrived in Vermont (about 8:35am), it was a milestone for me.  It is the 42^nd (and final) state that I will visit on this journey.  It also turned out to be one of my favorites, with swiftly flowing streams, hilly terrain interspersed with genuine mountains, numerous interesting towns, and good bicycling highways.

Just a little later in the day, I attained yet another milestone.  Somewhere around Ludlow, Vermont, I hit the 20,000-mile mark.  I couldn’t watch the “event” on my odometer, however, because it hasn’t yet happened on my odometer.  My odometer reads 5% low (I’ve checked it numerous times), so I have to add 5% to its figure, then subtract 152 (which was the number of miles I had on it when I left home last May) to get an accurate account of my journey distance.  Okay, it’s quirky, but it works.    

In anticipation of this milestone, I did some counting the other day and determined that it takes me about 400 cranks (complete revolutions of the pedals) to travel an average mile.  Going uphill in a low gear would take a great deal more than that, and coasting down a long hill wouldn’t take any at all, but 400 is a pretty good average number.  That means I’ve cranked the pedals about 8 million times so far.    

I arrived in Bennington after about 78 miles without having gotten wet, although I did take a couple of rain delays and saw more showers after I was safely inside my motel room for the night.  I had some good timing relative to the rain, as there were many places where I was miles from good shelter.  The first time it began to sprinkle I was on Bromley Mountain, right by the ski resort, and I pulled off at a lodge (closed for the season) that had a covered “drop-off” area.  I waited there about a half-hour as a thunderstorm passed.  Later, just a few miles north of Bennington, I got a few more sprinkles as I started down a small hill.  At the bottom I found a gift shop (also closed) with a front porch.   

I stopped at a Best Western Motel in Bennington.  There weren’t any non-smoking rooms on the first floor and I considered going elsewhere, but decided I would stay there anyway.  I could just offload the bike at ground level before I carried it up to my room, something I’ve done a couple of times before.   By the time I got around to telling this to the desk clerk, she had already “found” me a room on the first floor – an upgrade (at no additional cost) with a hydro-massage (whirlpool) bath.  That was very nice of her.