Whitinsville to Raynham, MA

45 miles. With the exception of the very end of today's ride, it was a very good day. After we topped a couple of knee-busting hills leaving Whitinsville, the terrain leveled out a lot and we were therefore able to make much faster progress. And despite the heavily populated nature of the area, at least 1/2 of today's ride was on relatively quiet secondary roads that were densely wooded and sprinkled with ponds and creeks. The weather was pretty darn good too - partly cloudy and neither cool nor warm.

The very last stretch today involved about 4 miles on very busy US 44, which wasn't really too bad until just before we neared our hotel. The motel (Hampton Inn) sits at the junction of US 44 and state highway 24 (44 runs east-west and 24 runs north-south). The hotel sits on the northwest corner of this intersection. We were riding east on 44, so we would assumed that we could make a left turn into the hotel lot. But we discovered that 44 is divided highway at that point; there is a median preventing east bound traffic from turning left. So we decided to get off 44 (turning south onto 24), thinking we could cross 24 (go north) then take the westbound on ramp for 44. BIG mistake. 24 turned out to be even more divided than 44, the equivalent of a freeway with a guard rail dividing the north and southbound lanes. Nor did 24 have any kind of shoulder at all. So we were in a quandary - do we try to ride south on 24, which would take us away from our destination and require us to ride in the right lane of a very busy, high speed highway? Should we go backwards up the ramp from 44 that we had just come down (assuming we could find enough room at the bottom of the ramp to turn the tandem and trailer around)? Or do we walk the bike northward on 24, against traffic, until we could reach the westbound on ramp for 44? The latter choice seemed to be the best, and we managed to do it safely. But it was a hair-raising experience. Dealing with the southbound traffic whizzing by was unsettling as we walked up the lane against traffic. Worse however was trying to avoid cars leaving the on ramp to 24 that had exited 44 westbound. There were a lot of trees and bushes obscuring our view of the on ramp. So Penny went to the edge of the ramp where she could get a better view of oncoming traffic, gave me the "go" sign and I sprinted across the ramp pushing the tandem and trailer onto a weed-filled median in between the westbound exit ramp and the westbound entrance ramp for 44. Penny then joined me, we pushed across the median and hopped on the bike in the westbound on ramp to 44. Within minutes we were safely in the hotel's lot. I wish that I could say that I learned a lesson from this experience, but I don't know what we could have done differently. There was no way to tell from Google Maps or the GPS that the two highways were divided in this manner. Perhaps we should have studied the situation more carefully before we went down the southbound 24 ramp.

On a lighter note, we are enjoying listening to the local accents. We stopped for lunch at a Subway today and Penny ordered a yogurt. The female clerk said "what flavah of yoga you want?" While ordering at dinner tonight, our server recommended the "lobsta" and, when Penny sneezed a moment later, she said "dat is the cutest sneeze evah!"

Tomorrow we plan to complete the eastern portion of our trip, finishing at my sister's house in the town of Mashpee on Cape Cod. We are both excited and a little wistful as we think about the experiences we've had (mostly good) and the people we've met (all good).