Day 7 - Meadville, PA

Eric here. Carson is soaking in a peppermint bath, which he deserves after this day, which featured crippling rain, face-burning headwinds, roads closed due to construction, countless uphills over the horizon, 18-wheelers driven by shoulder-hugging lunatics, freeway sections unfit for biking, treacherous downhills, and a more-than-a-mile stretch of gravel road (thanks, Google!). I have been biking about 15 miles a day, out in the morning with Carson and then back to the car, and so I have started to learn firsthand just the slightest bit about what must be necessary, physically and mentally, to cover more than NINETY... day after day after day. Those of you following this adventure, sending good thoughts and encouragement, need to realize that right now, Carson exists in a sort of alternate reality: one that other super-athletes might recognize, but incomprehensible to the rest of us. (Carson: thanks for the comments... I read them all, but haven't had the time to respond.) I consider myself a witness to something truly amazing.

I remember reading somewhere, perhaps as a child, that America's defining physical characteristics include great, sweeping flat plains. Those obviously are not in the Northeast, but I sure hope they come soon... Ohio? Pennsylvania, pretty much, is permanently out of the running as a bicyclist's paradise.