Woke 445 am. We were up and moving before Deanna arrived to prep the shop to open and to start baking. She made and then poured us some yummy coffee and we continued to have really nice conversation. Deanna is SO friendly and we are really enjoying our time with her. V and I both have the feeling that we're going to be friends with this lovely woman! She quickly got the broken door lock to work somehow, despite Vanesa and I having each spent 20 minutes last night trying to fix it (she said she had no idea how she fixed it, it just suddenly worked again) and it was right when her friend had showed up to to try to fix the lock; the poor guy wasted a trip. We had Deanna's amazing biscuits and gravy (mine with hot sauce) breakfast and it was so filling we each took half to go. She insisted we take a loaf of her bread, split into two bags so we each could carry half, and 10 Nature Valley granola bars for the ride, no charge. But a morning storm suddenly rolled in and Deanna and everyone else in the bakery recommended we stay and wait it out, that it would be a super-soaking rain. So we waited, and we talked to a bunch of nice locals and hung around until 10 am in a nice, dry, friendly environment. Deanna even offered V her car to drive to her apartment to take a shower and said we could wait out the storm there if we wanted!! Seriously, this kindness does not end. And Maui loves Deanna too!!! And Deanna’s mom Joy too. Those two both have such good energy. Maui seems to be becoming a bit more social on this trip in the past week or so, BUT she was way more immediately and effusively drawn to Deanna and Joy; I know it's because they exude such good energy. We left after writing the inaugural entry in Deanna’s cyclist log and rode off in cool (65-degrees) and cloudly weather. About 5 miles up the road we were pedaling up a mild hill when we saw a car drive by and suddenly pull over on the side of the road to park...and out jumps Deanna, waving her arms in the air. We thought she just missed us, hahaha, but it turns out she had driven to meet us to bring me MY CREDIT CARD that I had left in the shop when I paid for breakfast!! Wow, just WOW. It was a hillier exit from Eureka than we expected and with a decent head/crosswind, until hitting the tiny town of Rosalia. We stopped there at Flinthills High School to eat the rest of our breakfast in shade at a picnic table out in front of the school. I walked around back to fill our water bottles at a faucet I'd located, and when I came back V was talking to two ladies who’d come outside when they'd seen her and Maui hanging out. Stephanie Girty and Karen, both school employees working though school is out for summer. They offered us Gatorades (two each!) and candy (we said no thank you). They offered us showers (hmm, sense a theme here? Haha.) which we declined as I had gotten one last night at the Eureka city pool and V just didn’t want to shower mid-ride today and have to reapply chamois butter, which is precious out here. But, how kind of them! Stephanie even said that seeing cyclists stop by is one of her favorite parts of her summers. And, they BOTH knew who Deanna at Cake Batter Batter was immediately when we mentioned the amazing bakery we'd eaten in and stayed at last nigth. Deanna is famous and loved for both her personality and her food! The ride got hard for me between Rosalia and Cassoday, another 18 miles, with a relentless straight-on 12 mph headwind for 17.5 miles, with about a 0.5 mile break when the road turned briefly. I hated it. My ass hurt. My mind hurt. Headwinds are soul-sucking to me. And somehow V loved it!! The headwinds that make me most miserable to her are cooling the heat and she just gears down and enjoys the ride. She’s insane!! LOL I find headwinds so demoralizing that I’d rather ride in heat, hills, or both I think! My knee started to hurt a bit and when we pulled into Cassoday at around 330 pm, though my knee was fine again, V wanted me to pull the plug and not try to ride the remaining 38 miles to Newton and I agreed. As it turns out, Cassoday sucked. There was a dirty store, there were several annoying little kids running around. After we'd been there a while drinking sodas, I noticed I'd gotten a flat tire since arriving. AAAAAHHHHHH. On my super heavy steel-belted carbon-reinforced fucking Walmart tires?! Ugh. And these tires can't be that tough...I found just a small, not-super-sharp rock embedded in the tire when I changed it. The lady was preparing a catering meal and so she didn’t have her restaurant open but she let us buy sodas, canned beans, and canned pasta with sauce, and we sat down and winged it for dinner, ensuring we got sugar, protein, and fat to fuel the next morning's ride to Newton. The lady kindly offered for us to lay out our sleeping bags in the gazebo outside and we said yes because though kind of dirty it was less sketchy than the unmowed park in town with an old outhouse that they do not keep well-functioning. It was non-optimal and we didn’t want to stay, but my mind and body didn’t have another 38 miles in it at 430 pm and riding into the sunset so we did stay. We slept like hell and woke repeatedly because as it turns out this store is right next to an interstate AND the train tracks, both of which hummed with traffic all night long. We ended up having to put up the tent inside the gazebo because of relentless mosquitos swarming our heads when in our sleeping bags. We set the alarm for 3:00 because we wanted to get the hell out of there asap.