The friendly dog days of Bloomington

(brice writing)

After spending a fair amount of time being barked at/chased by various dogs over the past two weeks, we’ve enjoyed hanging out with friendly dogs the last two days. Last night, our great hosts Dan and Tammie had two sweet golden retrievers who could barely contain their excitement at meeting new people. Dan and his friend Troy are going to be touring up the east coast this summer; we hope they have as wonderful of hosts on their trip as we’ve had on ours.

We woke up this morning to a thunderstorm and ominous weather reports, but we bided our time until the last front showing up on weather radar moved through and headed out around 11. There was still a bit of a drizzle, but temperatures were warm enough to make our short 40 mile ride comfortable.

We made it to our next Official Destination of Bloomington, IN, where we will be taking a couple of rest days and visiting our good friend Rachel (Rachel was Susan’s college roommate and also officiated our wedding). Rachel has an awesome poodle who we are looking forward to chillaxing with during our downtime. Bloomington is home to Indiana University so has a lot going on; Rachel says that there’s a wider diversity of cuisine available here than in Indianapolis.

We don’t have big plans for the off days other than resting up, working out our remaining knee issues (which are thankfully dwindling) and finding a good bike shop to get a few items tuned up. Both our derailleurs are mis-shifting a bit and Susan’s rear wheel is out of true and was rubbing against the brake. I’ve worked out both problems on my own before but without a bike stand and a lot of patience they’re probably best left to the pros.

So that’s the news from here. Anything people are interested in hearing more or less about? Gear questions? Logistics? The weather? Road kill reports? Leave a comment.