Imagination Zone! and Flags!

Day 10 - June 11, 11:58 pm

61 miles. Stroudsberg, PA to Schuylkill Haven, PA (yea i couldn't pronounce it either)


I really must start going to bed earlier. LIghts off is at 11 and we wake up at 6am every morning. However there is just too much fun stuff from today to write about. This might have been my funnest day yet. And coincidentally the sun was also out.

Today I rode sweep along with Noah. This means that we are the last riders of the group at all atimes and responsible for helping anyone who may have run into trouble. This also means that we have an excuse for taking all the time in the world to stop everywhere and do every silly thing imaginable. To clarify, the only rules for riding each day is that you arrive by 4pm. Everyone rides at whatever speed they like and stops as much as they want.

As I alluded yesterday, Noah's wackiness cannot be described and our desire for fun today was a force to be reckoned with. It wasn't long before we found our first field to frolic in. Part of the reason we could stop so much was because of all the level ground we had today. After CT, these flat stretches in PA were like nutella and croissants for a starving Frenchman on a desert island. We easily rocked 20mph for a solid 3 miles at one point.

Today was also the first day I really felt like i was seeing America. The gentle hills and acres of green farmland were just unbelievable. We agreed that we could officially start using the word pasture from here on out. The lush green Appalachian mountains flanking us in the distance were just so immense and overwhelming in the best way. During several downhill coasts through this scenery my fantastic-meter definitely maxed out.

Soon enough we came across The Flag Store and decided for another unnecessary stop. As we prepared to give our usual pitch, we were interrupted by the fact that the lady had already seen us on tv that morning.( i forgot to mention yesterday that a local news channel came to interview us). This store was ridiculous in the best way possible in that it just had tons and tons of flags. The very nice owner Vena was so kind and donated a large American flag and Pennsylvania flag for us to fly on our trailer. We also snagged a sweet checkered racing flag that we'll start using to start off in the mornings. She also threw in a pamphlet describing the meanings of each fold in the traditional 13 fold flag folding ceremony of the US armed forces as well as other cool facts. (Did you know that a 21 gun salute comes from the sum of the digits in 1776?)

Our next irresistable detour was at the Imagination Zone. It's basically this children's funhouse(think playpens with plastic balls) which was too well named for our immature selves not to check out. Upon closer inspection we found their logo to be a circle containing a large flying pink unicorn opposite a voluptous red dragon. Needless to say Noah and I immediately jumped into several dragon and unicorn like poses as we set timers on our cameras.

Now get this, it turns out at lunch that one of the girls, Anne Lise, had been late because she had been flying in an open cockpit biplane! Turns out her dad and his friend are pilots and decided to meet her en route and take her on a quick spin. Awesomesauce? i think yes. After they left us, they flew their sweet blue and yellow propeller plane in circles around us dipping as low as 100 feet as they waved to us. I might as well have been a 5 year old is how excited I was.

I also saw my first ever real junkyard today. It just had mountains of scrap metal that are mindboggling. Of course several photos were taken here along with this totally random tin man statue in front of some random person's mailbox. MMM..That was fun.

Schuylkill Haven is a quiet town and the church was gracious enough to let us take over the entire parish house. They were just so sweet and had a great spread out for us. It was primarily the women's club organizing it. So you know those mustard stuffed egg things? Apparently they're called Devil Eggs, and the lovely Doris made a ton of them today. Basically, I love them and you can guess how many tables i almost knocked over upon seeing them and after having just ridden 60 miles. I unfortunately didnt get to chat with Doris too much, let alone learn any secret recipes, but thank you for the eggs Doris!

A typical B&B trip is expected to raise about $500 in donations on the road. After dinner, the women of the church threw a ridiculous $500 donation to us. Could they be any cooler? Seriously though, all these folks we meet aren't totally loaded and that was huge. I can't even process this kind of generosity. At this rate we already have close to $1,000 fundraised on the road within the first week.

It's too bad I repaid the church by clogging up their toilet. I eventually fixed it but it was just not fun times with that plunger.

Oh and there was a carnival in town tonight. Nothing too special, just a chance to see the locals and eat cotton candy.

Tomorrow i think i can get back to my pushup routine and will make an active effort to sleep early. Routine's are interesting. I really should be sleeping now but decided to write this in order to honor the routine that i am trying to cultivate. They're really the kinds of things that take a lot of time and energy initially, and almost beg you to give up. But once you pass the initial hill of resistance, they have enormous rewards.

I'm hoping that the discipline of this journal routine will roll over to other spheres of my life as i need it to. What routines do you have in your life and why are they valuable? What is stopping you from developing a new routine that will add value to your life? Are these obstacles really that insurmountable?

Goodnight!