The Plan: /ridewithgps.com/routes/26426921 Durham NH to Biddeford ME U of New England + World Cup Finals France vs Croatia Used 27% Battery over 7:05 (40 minutes watching World Cup) Since Cecile and Olivier are French and Evi has a Greek background, the World Cup Finals dominated the ride plan. The match began at 11:00 AM local time. Olivier had found 2 sports pubs at about mile 44 and mile 53 that would be televising the match. The plan was to get up super early, start riding at 7 AM and stop at one of the pubs. We had averaged 13.6 mph on a hilly Monday, so we should be faster today since this was a coastal route and we hoped to get to the 53 mile pub in 4 hours. But the organizers wanted a Group Photo (riders and volunteers) at 8:15 - so we would not only miss that, we would arrive at some of the water stops before they were set up. After dinner on Saturday Olivier and Cecile told Tim (ride head) of the plan and we understood we would be on our own. They take great pains to keep track of all riders so they can get them safely in at the end of the day. If you "go rogue", you don't get that protection. We got to breakfast at 6:30, but it was 7:30 by the time we got the bikes down from the dorms, our luggage on the truck, bottles filled and on the road. They were just setting up water stop 1 when we showed up. We helped them set up the sun awning, ate some chips and rode on. A few miles later some of the faster riders caught up and passed us. At water stop 2, Nubble Light House, we took some pictures and reloaded bottles. The head volunteer hadn't heard about our plan and was unhappy. He was fine with providing drinks and snacks, but marked us rogue. By now it was clear we would not make the start of the match, so we tried to decide "Did we want to see more of the match? (stop at mile 44)" or "Did we want a shorter ride after the match? (stop at mile 53)". It took a while discussing the tradeoffs, "see more World Cup at mile 44, but ride 27 miles (about 2 hours)" or "see less at mile 53, but ride 18 miles (about 1.5 hours)" Eventually we decided to ride more now and less later and called Olivier to go get seats at the mile 53 pub. We got to Federal Jacks Pub in Kennebunkport, and it was right on the harbor with lots of boats coming and going. There were 30 minutes left in the match and France was ahead 2-1. About 5 minutes after we got in, France made it 3-1. The cheers were so loud, you'd have thought we were in Paris. They scored once more while we were eating - great food, great match, great friends. The ride to the finish was good. We crossed as a team together and got our medals. Olivier drove home with Cecile and Evi. I had a chance to catch up with Julie Stephenson. We ride a lot at CRWs TGIF. Then we had a lovely dinner at the U. of New England overlooking a pretty inlet. I experimented with the Mongolian Barbeque dinner. Julie found some great desserts to top it off. College kids now have it way better than we did in the 60s.