Day 109 Waterbury to Barre, via Ben & Jerry's 48km

With no rain overnight and clear skies on waking, the tent is almost dry as we pack up and head back downhill for laundry and breakfast in town. The laundromat is pumping, full of locals taking advantage of a beautiful Sunday morning. Finding somewhere for breakfast is not so easy, Waterbury has been flood damaged by cyclone Irene, and the signs are everywhere. The community is obviously pulling together, with food drives at the fire brigade, linen collections at the hairdressers and free coffee from Green Mountain Coffee in the city park as their flagship cafe is waterlogged (lovely coffee too). Armed with clean clothes, full tummies (eventually) and with the Sunday newspaper fully digested we decide that the side trip to Ben and Jerry's ice cream factory is definitely worth it, and we even earn the ice cream by riding uphill to get there!



Kerstin is in her element, and we join the next tour, for a bit of education, a bit of kitsch and a bit of ice cream sampling. And if you "have" to eat ice cream, it may as well be ice cream with ethics, fair-trade, environmentally responsible and community orientated. We are so inspired post tour, we invest in an ice cream each. Kerstin goes for the Boonaroo buzz (English toffee, whiskey caramel on vanilla) and I try the Late Night Snack (chocolate coated potato chips, salted caramel on vanilla) because I wasn't brave enough to risk the pumpkin pie ice cream! Feeling well lubricated in sugar and fat a stroll to the flavor graveyard is in order, and we are highly amused by the little ditties to the flavours that didn't make it.



The road east takes us to the capital of Vermont, Montpelier, only the second state capital we have visited on this trip. A charming little place, where we are pleased to note that dogs are allowed to gambol in the grounds of the capital building.



With Mrs Robinson feeling better, but Audrey's brakes complaining on every downhill, a bike shop is still in order. Being Sunday we don't hold out much hope, but Montpelier proves to have a fantastic, and open bike store, Onion River Sports. With lovely staff who make time to examine Audrey and Mrs Robinson, a few little tweaks and we are good to go. Feeling much more confident that we can make it up and over the coming mountain, we pedal on to Barre. Which unlike Montpelier, is not pronounced in the French style, but in the Aussie style, 'Barry', as in "Hows it goin Bazza?", much to my amusement. A hotel in Bazza gives us the opportunity to yell and cheer at the TV as our basketball team, the Minnesota Lynx, win over Phoenix to earn a place in the finals, very exciting stuff! We also sit down with our remaining maps and discover that we are only one week from the finish line, with the Atlantic ocean only 200 miles or so away, how did that happen so fast? Posted using BlogPress from my iPad