Day 4. 52 miles.

We woke up to sunshine. I spent a couple of hours reconnecting with old teachers and students. We ate enormous omelettes with homefries and french toast with coffee. We left at about noon, heading through Littleton along Route 302 west. The shoulder was wide, the sun was out, and the grade was spectacularly flat. We rode along the Ammonoosuc River for awhile, and crossed the state line to Vermont early in the day.

Somewhere in the early afternoon, we passed another cyclist on an old blue ten-speed. After another few miles, he passed us. As Piper and I painfully crawled up hill after hill, we kept catching glimpses of the cyclist ahead of us, casually plugging away.

At the top of a huge hill several miles away, the cyclist finally pulled over. I crested the hill and stopped to say hi.

I was greeted by a frail 70 year old man, with a single tooth protruding from his lower jaw. He wore a flannel shirt and a pair of ratty loafers that were ripping at the seams. He didn't have a helmet, but instead wore a white sun hat with a big floppy brim and enormous glasses.

"Man, you smoked us!" I exclaimed, still puffing from the hill.
"What's that?" he asked, in his nonchalant New England drawl.
"You totally beat us up those hills."

Adam pulled up alongside us. I snuck a peak at the old man's bike chain, which was unridable by many cyclists' standards, gunked up beyond belief.

"Well, I'm out here riding for about five hours every day," he replied, "Where did you folks come from today?"

"Ah, we started in Littleton," I replied.
"Well I have you beat. I've already been to Lisbon and back this morning."

Burn. We just got whipped by a 70-year-old man on a crappy ten-speed.

As we rode away, I turned to Adam and said, "I would be honored to be half as cool as that guy in 50 years."

Adam agreed.