This morning I met up with Colton at the start of section 2 of the route. Colton is from Wisconson and is doing this bike trip after finishing college. The first thing I realized is that he is packing much lighter than me. He has no front paniers and no large steer bag. If I would have to guess, I would say he is carrying slightly over half the weight I'm carrying. Things he is not bringing include coocking gear, food, a camera and bike locks and I think he also carries much less cold weather clothing.
Even though we only started out at 10 AM, progress was very good as our paces were quite similar. Colton is climbing slightly faster and I'm descending slightly faster, which makes sense based on the difference in weight of our gear. In general we can keep up with each other pretty well and benefit a lot from each other. The terrain was also easier today: no big climbs and the smaller climbs were less steep than the previous days.
Also today we started to see touring cyclists going eastbound. We encountered 2 couples and a single guy. The latter told us that the Appalachians would be the hardest part and that the Blue Ridge would be the hardest part of the Appalachians. After Berea, Kentucky, which lies at the end of this section, everything would be much more flat and easier. So the hardest part is almost over :) In addition the guy was also carrying a lot of weight (both on himself and on his bike), which ensured me I'm not the only one carrying this much stuff.
As Colton is not carrying any coocking gear, we had an early dinner at a Pizza Hut. Whilst eating it started to rain pretty badly, lucky us :) We talked about the coming socces world championships and he tried to explain the rules of football to me (which failed). We set out again after the rain had stopped and tried to look for a good camping spot. I still have to get used to having early (cheesy) dinner and then doing some more biking as my belly was protesting heavily. I learned that for a good camping spot you should look for public places, like churches, parks and high schools, which are preferably hidden from sight and where little or no people are around. Before finding a good spot we encountered another thunderstorm and had to take shelter under a bridge. After setting out again we finally found a high school where we could stay in the dugouts of the baseball field. The field is located next to a train track and I spotted three trains each with 3 locomotives and 92, 120 and 134 carts.... Yes! yes! yeeeeheeees!!! (Don't get it? Watch more Jiskefet :p)
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