Miles 4 Melanoma

A fun and productive day off. I woke up around 8:00am and got dressed, and rode towards town to find the laundromat. I didn’t need to do laundry today, but a group of people were dropping off their clothes, then heading to breakfast. When I caught up to them, we headed downtown to the Tavern Restaurant, which is below the Archer House Hotel. We had the best breakfast that any of us could remember; I got steak and eggs. With us were Colleen, Robert, Bruce, Lynette, Alan, Jane, Brian, and Meg. Lynette could not finish her pancakes, so I ate those as well. After we ate, Molly and Marisa invited us up to their room at the hotel to watch the final Tour de France stage live; I was the only one to take them up on the offer. I left around 11:20am, after seeing Lance win and then his interview afterwards.

I wandered around town a bit and checked my e-mail at the Goodbye Blue Monday coffee shop while the rest went off to finish their laundry. Later, I met Robert, Brian, Colleen, and Jane at the movie theater; we saw “The Notebook” because it was the only thing playing at a convenient time. I looked around town a bit more, then joined a few people at the Contented Cow again to have a drink to kill time before dinner. Dinner was a buffet at Chapati, and Indian restaurant, which is also connected to the Archer House Hotel.

Tour Talk was at a park in the center of town. A bunch of people went to the Contented Cow again; I went and had one beer (Summit IPA from Minneapolis). I had ended up spending the entire day in town on my bike, but did not bring my headlamp, so I headed back to the school before it got dark. I had several packages in the mail that had been picked up at Cannon Falls, MN on Saturday, so by the time I got all of those organized, it was almost 11:00pm before I got to bed.

I told before how I bought the six-pack cooler in Pierre, SD to use as a trunk bag. That same day, I was showing it to Robert, and he ended up lending me his Topeak trunk bag to use instead, which is made to fit on the rack that I had bought. I liked it so much that I ordered one of my own from REI (I did the order online from the school in Miller, SD). At the same time, I also ordered a new air mattress. The one that I had bought in Ennis, MT was comfortable, but it was such a pain to deflate and fold up. I noticed that David Butler had one that was only $20 from REI, and it had a built-in foot pump, and was a twin size, so I ordered one just like it. A replacement for my broken tent pole had also arrived; thanks to my friend Claire back in Pittsburgh for taking care of that for me. I also received a package of mail from that my friend Jamie forwarded to me from home; it included a couple of medical bills from Idaho, so it looks like dealing with that will not be as simple as one would hope…

Filed under: Coast to Coast 2004 |