Lesson of the Day: When riding against a strong wind with your bike partner drafting directly behind you, always veer to the side before launching a snot rocket.
We slept in this morning to compensate for a lack of sleep in Niagara Falls. The morning was cold and windy. We stopped at a state park in the early afternoon for a lunch of bread, hummus, apples, carrots, cashews, and many other miscellaneous food items. We lay in the sun for an hour or so, bundled up in our warmest layers and using our gear as shields against the wind.
The rest of the day was a fight against the wind. Where we ususally average about 18 mph on flat, smooth surfaces, today we were only getting about 11 or 12.
The night before, we noticed that our fuel for the MSR stove was getting a bit low. We stopped at a gas station to explain our predicament, then constructed a funnel out of cardboard and filled the bottle with gasoline. As we were leaving, a heavyset man wearing a red flannel shirt looked at our bikes and said, "Don't fill up here! Wait 'til you get to Pennsylvania. Gas is cheaper over there."
"I know," I said, holding up the red fuel bottle, "18 cents is pretty steep."
It took some effort to overcome the wind, but eventually we crossed the Pennsylvania border.
