Summertime and the Livin' is Easy

That is unless you're on some wacky bike trip where you ride your brains out every day. In that case, the livin' is hard. Life for us: get up, eat, ride 7 or 8 hours (where I come from we call that a job), shower, eat, collapse into bed, and repeat it all the next day. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know---we brought this upon ourselves. We paid good money to be this tired, but we really are having a blast.

Day 14
Emporia, Virginia to Rocky Mount, North Carolina
59 miles (practically a day off!) 1,085' climbing---in other words a whole lot of flat

We started riding this morning and I had to look down at my shorts to see if I'd inadvertently put on some shorts without the padding in the seat. Nope, I had on my new-specially-bought-for-this-trip Terry cycling pants. I swear yesterday they had a lot more padding.

Since we ride the backroads, we see a lot of farmland. One crop I've never seen but wondered about is cotton.

Poofy cotton balls on a cotton plant.

It feels and looks just like, well...cotton.

This is a peanut plant. The peanuts grow beneath the soil like potatoes. I've been intrigued with peanut plants ever since I first read about George Washington Carver in the 5th grade.

Some baby peanuts.
I wonder if they'll get to be Reese's Peanut Butter Cups when they grow up.

Steve W., Mike, Mary Kay, and I entering North Carolina

Today's SAG stop was at this lovely spot on the river
near the Roanoke Rapids.

For sale at our local convenience store.

You can buy a big styrofoam cupfull for $2.99. They come in the shell. You open the shell like
you normally would, then eat the hot, squishy peanut inside.
I think they taste like pinto beans.

I zeroed out my odometer as we left Maine. Today it rolled over 1000. 1000 miles! That's far even in a car.