Assateague 08' Spin Spin!

I did my yearly ritual Assateague Beach weekend. I end up doing some riding there, while I visit the beach. This year the weather was very nice compared to last year's trip. I rode up in the Element with the Tandem and 3 people and all our beach stuff. I also had two bikes on the hitch rack. I got dropped off at Hebron again and left from there to go to the beach. The route I take is not the most direct but, by going to the town of Snow Hill I know I have a place for a pitstop. Well last year my 72 miles turned into an 80+ mile journey. This year I was determined for that not to happen. The ride started off with me getting out of Hebron going to the small ferry. The ferry ride is fun not sure why they don't have a bridge. I did well until the turn right on SeaTick it wasn't there, but I knew from doing the ride last year that I was going the wrong way. Now in doing this ride, you have to imagine that I have a squeak in my bike, I now know that it is coming from my wheels. So the whole 75 miles I am hearing a noise on all the down strokes when I am pedaling. I Finally get to the rest stop, and the place where I stopped last year, has not cleaned their Port-a-John in a long time so I got out of there quick. I found a Chinese take-out place that sold sodas. I saw they had a bathroom-jackpot! So I went in used the bathroom and then filled my water bottles, and then bought a Mountain Dew from the cooler in the Chinese take out place. I then traveled on to the shore, and hit some massive headwind. I was doing a pretty good avg. speed around 19.7, but with the trolling around Snow Hill my avg. went down. After I went down by the shore I headed up to Berlin, around this point my undercarriage was not feeling great so I would stand out of the saddle to relieve the pressure. I finally got to the Verrazono bridge that goes to Assateague. The campsite was farther than I thought. I finally got to the campsite around 7pm or so.
Some things I remembered/learned on the ride:

Flat road riding has so much spinning!

You never really get a Cardio workout, unless you push it, which you can't do for 4:45 hours.

Flat road riding is really about Leg strength.

The next day I did a Tandem ride with Sara, we were lucky that we were able to leave from the campsite then have Jon(who drove my car) there to take the Tandem back to the campsite. At first Sara and I were flying we were tapping out a good rhythm. After 15 miles we were on the route that others would be doing as well. We did the route and around 30 miles, Sara's leg started hurting. I am not sure why it did, but it might be because her seat is too far back. The other issue was that my undercarriage was not liking having to bike again. So I had to stand to relieve the pain. Well we finish strong with 47miles and a 19mph avg. The issue was that we had to hangout for almost an hour and a half for people to get back. The reward though was going to Rayne's Reef diner where they have great burgers and milkshakes. Rayne's Reef is also where they filmed the Run Away Bride as Falcons. It was good ride, and I felt that we had some good power on the roads. Hopefully we can get her leg issues figured out.