We woke on the dirty TimeOut Pizza deck at 430 and were out riding by 5:55. It just takes a surprisingly long time to pack all our gear, eat, toilet/feed Maui, and get the route loaded on the phone and the SPOT GPS tracker started. We forced down 3 slices of cold pizza for brekky (well V ate 3 and I just couldn’t do it so saved one wrapped in a napkin on my handlebars for later) and hit the road. A nice thing about camping at a place like the deck at the pizza restaurant is that it doesn’t cost anything. A downside is there’s no toilet. It’s no big deal to pee behind any old tree, but what do you do when you have to do your morning numero dos? Well, in rural Kentucky it seems you stop when cycling past a beautiful church and walk behind it, away from road visibility, and you confess your sins there. You feel gross and guilty. But there are no restaurants, convenient stores, portapotties, or anywhere else around for a human to relieve himself so you do what you have to do. And, because you don’t carry a shovel but you do have a dog and you believe in the “pack it in, pack it out” ethos of camping, you just man up, swallow your pride, grab a dog poop bag, and pick up your own business and throw it in the dumpster before you leave. No harm, no foul. Everyone poops. No guilt for being a disgusting human desecrating a church property because you did your business and then you properly took care of your business. And then we rode bikes. In the rain. Pouring rain. We got caught in what I think may be the hardest rain I’ve ever been in, and thankfully got the Gore-Tex on before we got too wet. And we rode hills. STEEP HILLS. There were four big steep climbs on the day, but countless shorter steep ones. So many you quit counting but feel more downtrodden and beat down with each one. Appalachia is NO JOKE. Vanesa walked her bike up 3-4 more climbs, although I think some of her lack of energy was due to taking an Allegra pill right before we left in the morning and allergy meds often make her MEGA-drowsy. I actually worried today she might fall over sleeping while walking or riding her bike…but, after the first huge climb, we found a gas station convenience store, thankfully, and we were able to re-energize with a terrible (but at least super hot) sugary coffee and a package of Chips Ahoy. That pepped Vanesa up enough to make it through the rest of the day, our day of the most cumulative climbing yet, and though she walked up several more climbs and I had a slow go riding up them as well, we finally made it into Hindman after 63 miles and over 5000’ of climbing! Along the way we rode through poverty-stricken areas (Poor Bottom Hollow, for example, was very aptly named) so bad that in places there were people living with houses, cars, buildings, and roads just crumbling in decay, and trash literally everywhere. I understand poverty, I just don’t totally understand why that means you just throw your trash everywhere. Maybe it accumulates for generations because they can’t afford to dispose of it? Or maybe it’s just what you get used to doing because everyone else is doing the same thing? But the mountains are so pretty that it’s sad to see them so trashed. And, as a cyclist here you have to be careful because suddenly the edge of the road will just fall off into nothingness because it crumbled away and no one fixed it. And we have been dreading the legendary, unfenced dogs of Eastern Kentucky - we know so many folks who have been chased and/or bitten, or have crashed while trying to avoid these dogs that stalk and chase - but thankfully we made it through today’s ride with fewer chases than expected (probably because it was at the time, or had recently been, pouring rain and was fairly early in the morning) and the ones that did chase us we managed to evade by slowing down (to be less interesting), or sweet talking, or using a loud air horn. I did have to threaten one dog with a heel kick to the barking snout but he stayed just far enough away that I didn’t actually kick him). So we felt victorious making it safely through the dog gauntlet between the towns of Lookout and Pippa Passes! When we got to Hindman, we were pleasantly surprised with a Family Dollar grocery store (V got chips) and a Dairy Queen (I got a Blizzard). I also bought us some melon, blueberries, bananas, and yogurt for a huge fruit salad for dinner (pure bliss because oh my GOD it is hard to eat well out here, needing frequent instant calories to stay energized to ride a bike, but not able to carry a lot of weight and having such infrequent restaurants available causes us to eat a lot of peanut butter or cheese crackers, M and M’s, granola bars, nuts, sour gummy bears, muffins, and Cokes). I carried the bag of food on my handlebars, not the safest thing but real food was so necessary, and we walked around the Hindman First Baptist church hostel that was supposed to be available for us to sleep in. It was all locked and no one was answering the phone at the number they’d listed on our route map, but we found a locked door that hadn’t been properly shut and we pushed our way in and made ourselves comfortable. As comfortable as you can be in a disgustingly dirty place, that is. We didn’t want to touch anything! There is a kitchen with food for cyclists, but there was opened, moldy and outdated food everywhere. I can’t adequately describe it but I just can’t imagine how people live and recreate here (it’s an active church with music nights, youth groups, cyclists passing through). I really think it’s just the way of life here. Eastern Kentucky is dirtier than other places. So Vanesa cleaned the church hostel’s shower, toilet, and bathroom sink, and she vacuumed the church carpet, while I got our things set out to sleep on the couches and organized the bike. The microwave is broken, the freezer is frozen shut, there is no clean sponge to do dishes, so we’re just eating the food out of the packages it came in with our own spoons we carry on the bikes. And yet we’re grateful for a comfortable couch to sleep on and an indoor area to have a much-needed rest day. Our doggie is sick and needs meds and a rest day too. If there were a motel here we’d be in it, but again, we’re grateful for this shelter and we just try to not touch anything. Maui is improving with the meds, is no longer throwing up and is starting to take food and water in small quantities again, so we’ll be up early and riding again. Today was a great day to get some things done (ordered a bike pump and some chamois cream, as well as a new/better chamois for me) to be delivered to a motel a few days up the road from here, as well as to catch up on these ride posts. Vanesa rode 2.7 miles to the closest store and got some more real food since we decided to take a day off here. And now I’m off to eat a can of beans and some cheese, and more fruit - apples, blueberries, cut watermelon, and cantaloupe - for our second dinner. The earlier spinach salad wasn’t enough! We are having quite the adventure. Sometimes wonderful, sometimes awful, but always enjoyable. Oh, and that piece of pizza I had stashed on my handlebars when we left early this morning? I ate it at the top of our first climb, soggy from the heavy rainstorm and yet still the best thing I ever tasted.