Day 11 - Hubris

Today was a late start. Not only did we sleep in, but then we went to McDonalds, which is becoming our regular hangout, to upload the blog and check emails. We wanted to start riding to Paris early but we didn’t leave until 12:30. Riding was much easier than a couple days ago. Less hills and overcast. This particularly enjoyable for David since he was wearing bright red sun-sleeves despite the sun-block that I gave him. In the first hour and a half we had already made it 30 miles. This was the achievement that caused us to do something we would later in the day regret. After eating a late lunch due to our late start, we were still making great time and decided that we didn’t need to find a campsite and would just ride to Paris in one day. Dumb dumb dumb. Here’s what happened; we made it to the outskirts of Paris by 8:00 and it was already getting dark; then we got lost and didn’t arrive to NICO’s, our host, until 12:00; we were tired and hungry and frustrated - AGAIN. All of this was because, for some reason, we couldn’t navigate around the city and actually get into the heart of Paris. At some point we took a wrong turn and found ourselves getting onto a highway after following an exceptionally long entrance ramp. Once on the shoulder of the four lane A1-N1 which is the main artery into Paris, we decided the safest thing to do was to walk to the next exit ramp. This is something I will be sure to avoid in the future no matter what. Although we knew we could make it after we had checked (and double checked) the milage to Paris, we still didn’t actually have any definite plans for where we would stay once we got there. Ugh this is the second time this has happened and it will never happen again. Never. Luckily Nico agreed to let us stay, which we found out at a pseudo-McDonalds known as Quick, and he wasn’t even upset that we arrived at 12:00. Honestly we thought it was 10 or 11. By the time we entered the city and found the place we were staying we were at about 105 miles. My legs (Alyssa) still felt pretty good but I was bored with riding and getting tired and anxious and frustrated.

Anyway, the flat is a pretty cool place. Two guys and a girl live here, all are our age. Nico is an artist and they also ride their bikes around the city. We were allowed to take showers when we arrived and eat. Turns out Nico will be visiting the states for three months just being a tourist and will be in Cleveland Ohio! Hopefully he will want to see us again when he comes.

P.S. We broke the 300 mile mark on our odometer - unfortunately I feel that much of that has been spent being lost…