Louisville, KY

Today it's my (Ruth dad's) turn. While Ruth couchsurfed last night in Huntington, WV, Marianne and I spent the night with my sister & brother-in-law in Pittsburgh, PA. We always appreciate their hospitality!

Ruth, Marianne and I have happily reunited in Louisville, KY. By now we have ridden some 700 miles and our derrieres are getting used to it. A good rhythm is to ride about 90 mins and then take a break. At highway speeds that translates into 90-110 miles (depending on the speed limit plus "margin") and by then Marianne's Softail and Ruth's Shadow need to be fueled up anyway because their range is about 160 and 130 mi, respectively. Keeping the legs to 90mins really helps avoiding getting sore!

Also, at gas stations one always meets interesting people, and when they hear that we are on a cross-country trip inevitably their eyebrows go up. We ran into a woman originally from Utrecht/The Netherlands, a lady in a Mercedes convertible who remarked on our “nice bikes”, and a Harley-couple from Louisville, KY who is dreaming of doing this tour, too.

In Louisville we had planned to tour the Evan Williams Distillery, but unfortunately the last tour was already sold out. So we did the second best: We bought a bottle of bourbon (“Larceny”) which we opened later that evening when we were back at the hotel. But before returning to the Days Inn, we walked along the Ohio River, saw the Clark statue (yes, the Lewis & Clark guy – going cross-country I feel a little bit like him...) and had dinner in hip bar/restaurant called “Garage” which described exactly what it was before it was turned into a bar...

Before returning to the hotel, we briefly ride across the Ohio River so that Marianne and I can claim that we rode through 5 states in one day: PA, WV, OH, KY and IN. Ruth can claim 3 states today: WV, KY, IN.

Yesterday we had to put out raingear on - it kept us dry :-)