I was planning on leaving early this morning, but as I was waking up, Dawn stopped by the cottage on her way to work and told me that there was coffee and cereal waiting for me in the kitchen 🙂 I got a chance to do all my laundry and dry out my tent from when it got soaked two days before. After getting some other house keeping chores done I crossed the three mile bridge (pic) from Point Harbor to Kitty Hawk and got some lunch. Riding along a bridge with a narrow shoulder full of junk, 20+ mph head winds and cars going 50+ mph is a harrowing experience. I really hope the winds are more favorable when I have my bike loaded with all my gear and the trailer, because I’ll have a lot more surface area to catch the wind and a wider profile sticking out into the road.
First order of business after getting lunch (footlong chicken vidalia onion melt, double meat, double cheese + avocado – felt like a snack) was finding some cheese and wine to share with my hosts. They seemed like the type of people that would totally be into it and it’s nice to be able to be add something to the dinner table. I got a round of Harbison and three bottles of white to try with it – Vinho Verde (easy summer drinking wine – best match), Sauvignon Blanc (New Zealand, my hosts Nick’s bike touring location) and Orvieto Classico (Italian, because I’ve been there). The cheese was fabulous – soft cows milk wrapped in spruce cambium (inner bark) with a bloomy rind similar to camembert. To serve I cut the top rind off we could spoon it out onto crackers. It has a vegetal taste (think a hint of cauliflower) and also spruce especially the cheese that was scraped off the bark. Everyone enjoyed it including their son and daughter who were a tentative at first.