london fun

This past weekend my aunt and I decided to bike to Brighton from London. What started out as a small idea was morphed very quickly into this day long ride. We were throwing around possibilities at a after softball game pub meeting with her coworkers when we mentioned out idea for the ride. One of her coworkers, Sam, very quickly offered us a place on her fold out couch (awesome mattress btw) and that's when we decided to go for. Its a 65 mile ride from her front door to Sam's steps. Sounds like a long ride right? It probably wouldn't have been so bad if we knew where we were going. This is an extremely common bike route in England- Theres even an race in the upcoming month. Yet we relayed on an IPhone and good old google maps. We were doing well for the first 45 miles and then we took a wrong turn down this horrible hill. At the bottom was Staplefield. It was here in this unfriendly lil town consisting only of a church and evil parishioners that we decided we were going to find a train. Only that required going back up this hill we had just coasted down for the last 5-10 minutes... complete and utter hell. After that hill it was only a 5 mile (shoot me) ride to the station and a 15 minutes train ride to town. That was one of the most physically trying days of my life- literally the only reason I work out now is to make room for chinese buffets. So if theres one thing I've learned on this trip that is to make sure you know where you are going ahead of time.