Hot Blazin' Recta

(This post is for yesterday, Tuesday August 29.) Sorry I did not get to post yesterday. One somewhat surprising aspect of this trip is how little free time we have. We usually arrive each day between 2 and 4, but then there are showers to take, laundry to do, wives to call, maybe a little bike work, next day's bike food to buy, dinner to eat, and yes, a blog to write. Yesterday we spent a couple hours working out stopping points and hotels for the Kansas to Colorado leg. The challenge is finding towns large enough to have hotels that are spaced roughly 80-100 miles apart. As we get further west that gets harder to do.

The ride yesterday was kinda ho-hum. After retracing our steps on the bike path that connects Monteagle and Sewanee, we headed north on US 41A. It was a bit busy, and plagued with what seems to be a common theme of the highways at least here in Tennessee: in many places there is no shoulder, and in many other places there is just enough of a shoulder for a bicycle, but the highway department has seen fit to defile it by carving rumble strips into it, making it totally unrideable. Our choice is either to ride to the left of the strip in traffic, or try to thread the needle to the right between the strip and the edge of the pavement -- an area that's often full of gravel or other debris. We were able to get off the highway onto some side roads for some stretches, so that was welcome relief.

Anyway, about the title of the post. It's not surprising that our bottoms are a bit tender after 7 days and 600 miles of riding. So when we saw this barbecue sauce at our dinner spot (Jim Oliver's Smokehouse in Monteagle, highly recommended) we got a good chuckle out of it.

Many jokes about separate beds, San Francisco, etc.

Our stop yesterday was at Will and Pam's home in Nolensville, just southeast of Nashville. Will is Lisa's brother and he was kind enough to cook us a great spaghetti dinner in spite of being on crutches from a ruptured Achillie's tendon. Plus we got to see their adorable daughter Olivia who sent us off with a big hug.

Yesterday's stats: 91 miles, 2899 feet of climbing (it's surprisingly flat between Sewanee and Nashville)