27.8 mi / 10.4 mph / 427 ft. climbing
Home: Barbara’s AirBNB

We didn’t have far to ride to our afternoon check-in AirBNB, so we were able to take a lazy morning. A slow wake-up, Steve had coffee on, and then we all walked over to the Harborside Cafe for breakfast. Not actually beside any harbor, it’s instead an awesome, bustling, community-oriented place on a residential corner. The food was as excellent as the vibe.

The morning headwinds were stronger than yesterday, so it was a bit of a push getting through Bridgeport-proper. The industrial history of the city was still plain to see, but we certainly didn’t get shot. Today we only crossed I-95 seven times, down from yesterday’s eight.

We picked up sandwiches at a gas station with a deli inside, and stopped for an unusually-early lunch just 11 miles into our ride, on the beach at Silver Sands State Park. We saw a couple of guys walking down to the sand with wetsuits and huge backpacks, from which they unfurled big inflatable kites. Which they then proceeded to attach themselves to and go tearing off across the ocean (and sometimes flying through the air)! We were glad to see that at least someone could make use of the wind that was annoying us.

On an unremarkable bit of road, on a slight downhill, Rett’s bike suddenly started fishtailing wildly in front of me. I was sure she was going down, but miraculously, she muscled the bucking bronco under control and safely brought it to a stop, with a small cut on her calf the only bit of damage. Neither of us is quite sure what happened, but it seems her foot slid off her pedal in the midst of a power stroke (perhaps due to an ill-timed bump in the shoulder), and the resulting shock triggered the fishtailing. Either way it was terrifying for both of us, and we’re glad Rett’s bike-handling skills got her out of it with no real damage.

We ate the second half of our lunches 11 miles after the first, on a beach-boulevard bench in West Haven. Then we turned north towards our AirBNB on the west side of New Haven. As we were waiting at a light, a couple of black guys in the car next to us asked where we rode from, and when we said “Seattle”, they were so flabbergasted that they were literally hopping up and down in their seats in amazed disbelief. If nothing else, Connecticut is great for reminding us that what we do is pretty awesome.

We arrived to our new home for the next 18 nights, and found the basement unit in the four-unit house bigger than we expected, so we were even able to get the bikes inside (after some rearranging). It’s now time for a very different form of “time off the bikes” than we’ve been living across the last two months.