Day 43 - From Youngstown, Ohio to Erie, Pennsylvania - 104 miles

Today was quite an eventful day! I started with

an hour in the morning waking up at Starbucks across the street from our hotel. This was very exciting to me because this is one of the few Starbucks that have been in walking distance from our hotel on this trip and often there isn’t even a Starbucks in the town we are staying in or any towns nearby. I got two Starbucks cards to use on my trip – thanks Annie and Mom – and have hardl

y used them – so I enjoyed a nice warm cup of tea this morning as I read my book before everyone else woke up and had breakfast at 6:30am. I also read the weather which predicted thunderstorms throughout the day – lovely!

Well we didn’t have thunderstorms but we did have some major rain downpour for many many miles. In the middle of the rain, my front wheel broke a spoke and the rim cracked – that is two awful wheels I had on my bike – so I was in the pouring rain and couldn’t go anywhere. I called the sag wagon and luckily they were only a few miles away and drove me to the first sag stop to exchange my wheel for another loaner – I was really upset and sobbing about it, but my tour leaders made it not so bad and had me out on my bike right away. I rode back to where I got sagged so that I could make up those miles and to make it an even 100 miler day since it was only an extra 3 miles I had to go back and the day needed exactly 3 more miles to make it 100 miles – so it was perfect! However, I got lost and ended up adding an extra 4 miles to the 100 – so that was a longer day than I expected but I felt great the whole day and could have kept riding! I even considered, just briefly, of doing the 15 mile loop around Lake Erie – just a fleeting thought.

We passed through another state and the sun came out the rest of the day – we are now in Pennsylva

nia and will be having a rest day here, on my birthday! I didn’t get a photo of me and the state sign but Richard did and will be emailing it to me so that I can post it :) My camera was having trouble due to the rain but it started to work again this evening so I got some great photos of my lovely birthday cake that was at dinner tonight. No one knew who sent me the birthday cake and it was even in my favorite color – blue! :) We were all so eager to eat it that I forgot to take a photo of it before I cut it. It tasted great and later I found out my mom arranged to have it delivered – thanks MOM! It was perfect that we had it a day early because tomorrow we will be gone all day at Niagara Falls – yahoo! I have so much energy that I even think I’ll run tomorrow morning… life is so good :)