Day 21, Saturday, September 28

Today was pretty tiring, although not as hard as the day into Lula several days ago with twenty- to thirty-mile-per-hour head and side winds and, of course, not as bad as the most difficult days in the first half of the trip. I drafted Doreen and Josh on the tandem until lunch, which sped up the miles, but I was pretty overheated and my legs were fried afterwards, so for a while I regretted having kept up with them but eventually was able to recover a bit after riding on my own.

It was sunny today, I even got sunburned again. I thought today would be the really steep climbing day, but it turns out that that's tomorrow, when we climb something called Burnt Mountain. Someone said we get to the top by the second rest stop and then have down hill all the way to the ocean in South Carolina, but I think that was a bit of an exaggeration. The last few days coming up are relatively short, though, and not steep in terms of overall climbing, so maybe they will go by quickly.

I don't have much to say about the day. At some point early on, John from Placerville, California, said as he passed me, shaking his head, "Only four more days of this." It made me laugh. I think he's as burnt out as I am, and he's even had pretty bad medical problems (he has a ruptured disc that makes half of his body go numb when he rides). The traffic has been getting worse every day for the last several, and all I want at this point is to make it home safely.