80 miles later...

Hello! We are currently at Andrew’s house in Dublin, Ohio. We have seen a mixture of different things in the past few days with a wet and rainy day yesterday, followed by a hot and humid day today. The land had flattened out significantly in the past few days as we have made our way out of the Appalachian Mountains and into the plains of the Midwest. Today we spent a good portion of the morning riding on bike trails before hitting flat back country roads for the majority of the afternoon. With the change in landscape we also got our first taste of the Midwestern winds today while also experiencing hot and humid weather with the temperatures reaching near 90 degrees. I rode with the “green girls” and Steve this afternoon and felt fine until the last 10 (of 81) miles when the hot and humid weather started to get to me and zap my energy. We rolled into the Erikson residence late afternoon and were greeted by Andrew’s parents, our teammates, air conditioning and showers along with a lot of great food! Andrew’s parents put together an amazing dinner tonight and have gone above and beyond to put us up in their home here in Dublin. After riding all day in the rain yesterday – I can’t even explain how nice it was to have a warm shower today. They are doing our laundry while we are here as well and will make it nice to hit the road on Saturday wearing clean clothes. Tomorrow we will have our second off day of the journey, which I’m sure will be spent resting and relaxing. I’ll try to upload photos at some point tomorrow.