On Friday morning we biked back to Fairhaven after saying goodbye to our wonderful host and stopping at the nearest bike shop to fix my shoes.  The bike shop, Idle Times, was right at the corner of a bike path that we had missed on our way up the previous day and was highly recommended by Rick and Julie.  The mechanic was kind enough to not only replace the plates that the cleats screw into, but he also gave me a few extras.  I doubt I will need them now that I’ve got some strong Shimano plates (the Keen ones that came with my shoes were weak).  Also along the way, we stopped at a jam/honey shop and a fudge shop to sample the offerings.  We finished cycling before dark this time and drove to LL Bean, where I bought a much-needed headlamp and Garmin Edge 605.

The weekend in Providence was crazy.  It was a huge weekend for the bike crowd, as the cyclocross festival was in town, there was a bike-walk summit on Friday, a frame builders ball at the Biltmore, and a veloswap going on in Roger Williams park concurrent to the cross fest.  Upon returning to Providence on Friday I went straight to the builders ball, where several frame builders from New England had an array of frames on display.  This was a good networking opportunity for possibly finding a bike sponsor.

Saturday was unseasonably warm – a perfect beach day.  Unfortunately, I spent mine selling my belongings at a yard sale on the front lawn.  I woke up at 7am and the neighbor was also having a yard sale. When I looked out the window and saw a crowd of people across the street, I panicked briefly, thinking that all these people had shown up hours early and were waiting for my yard sale.  I started putting the boxes outside at 10am, and people were immediately picking through everything.  This was my third yard sale of the year, and I noticed that the majority of my customers are spanish-speaking, they all want to buy tons of stuff, and they don’t want to pay more than 25 cents for everything.  After the yard sale, I had just enough time to put away all of the unpopular items that didn’t sell, shower, and go to our going away party downtown.  In preparing for the trip, I had accidentally purchased two sleeping bags, thinking that one of them was a sleeping bag liner, when in fact it was a sleeping bag that came with a liner.  I brought this extra sleeping bag to the party to raffle off.  It was a great party, with the highlight (in my personal opinion) being that my friend Andrew brought an entire gateau concorde to share with everyone.  I discovered this cake only within the past year, and it is my absolute favorite.  I encourage everyone to try it from either Meeting Street Cafe or Rue De L’Espoir.

Sunday was the last day before taking off for good, and I had more to do than time permitted.  I woke up early to check out the cyclocross fest before meeting my friend Ashley for breakfast at the Duck & Bunny (one of the places I’m going to miss).  After breakfast I drove to Dartmouth to visit family before leaving, and then drove to Warwick to look into buying a netbook or tablet so I can upload photos and videos (and update this website) from the road.  I spent several hours looking around but became overwhelmed by the options and ended up leaving empty-handed.  I needed to go to Newport one more time to collect the last of my things from the apartment where I was living and to say goodbye to my friends down there.

I felt like I was doing an awful lot of driving a car in preparation for a bicycle trip.  I struggled to stay awake long enough to drive back to Cranston and try to sleep before the big departure.