Lowville, KY

Today is our first day off of the trip, and we're spending it in Louisville (but usually pronounced "Lowville"), KY! As you can see from the pictures in my last post, we had an awesome build day in Portsmouth, OH. Before leaving town we went by the flood walls that line the Ohio River. There was almost a mile of these beautiful murals depicting the history of Ohio painted on the walls.

We just had 2 days of riding before reaching Louisville, but they were some of our longest. We road 95 miles into Paris, KY and then 85 miles to get from Paris to Louisville. On these days that are close to 90 miles or that will reach 90 degrees (we call them 90/90 days) we wake up at 5am to get a jump on the day. The 95 mile day into Paris went really smooth. The weather was perfect, and we all finished the day around 4pm. Fast! We stayed at a YMCA that night and made use of their outdoor pool.

Yesterday was our 85 mile ride into Louisville. My friend Paige and I (above) road "sweep." That means we ride last in the pack and make sure everyone gets in safely. The day started with us biking past lots of pastures where they raise Kentucky Derby style horses. It was a beautiful landscape. Later in the day, the sun came out and we took to the rolling hills of Kentucky. It hit about 93 degrees by 3pm and Paige and I stopped to pick up a couple of squirt guns to cool down the other riders. It was a blast. Due to the heat and hills, we got into our host site a 630, but what an awesome day.

Here are a couple of videos I took while out on the road. This first video is of our descent into Mcconnellsburg, PA. After climbing for around 5 miles we coasted down 3 miles of downhill! Here's a video of Colin King screaming by at around 40mph.





This is a video of some riders standing at the bottom of another big descent. The turn we were supposed to take is pretty sharp, so we decided to point out the turn to riders behind us. This was also a really long downhill, so it helped to give the riders heads up to slow down.

Thanks for checking out the blog! Time to head out into Louisville for our day off. If you haven't checked out our bike and build website, click here to see our route tracker, journal written by a new rider each day, and photos posted by all the riders. Thanks!

-rob