OK, I am home.
Today was ugly, but we did ride. The rain went through last night, and there was nothing really forecast for the rest of the day and the radar looked OK. We cut off the jaunt to Ft. Ti and the ferry, bringing the ride to 26.5 miles. We tried to get it down to 22, but all the short cuts were dirt or gravel roads. We were prepared for relentless climbing, by looking at the profile, but at about mile 5 (where the climbing began), it started misting. That was OK, but at about mile 14 or so, it started raining. Just for about 5 minutes, but there was a vicious headwind, the temperature was going down, and the grades were all 12%. DH started zooming down the hills and sprinting up the ups, to get it done. Not as fast as usual, but I just couldn't do it... I don't stand, except on little hills, and by this time, my legs were shot. After one point, there was a really hard climb that came to a stop, where we had to make a left. It flattened at the stop, so I rested. Problem, was, after the turn, there was a bit more of a hard climb (12-14%) and I was so tired, I had a little trouble getting started, but DH waited at the top. After that, we were both equally tired, and we just slogged ahead. Eventually, we went down a 9% downhill, where I was praying there were be no similar up on the other side, but there wasn't, and it flattened out to a nice 3 mile newly paved flat road. We got into Brandon center, made our way to where our car was at inn #1, and drove back to the village to get lunch. By this time, while it was dry, it was about 48 degrees and felt like November. We had an excellent lunch, congratulated ourselves, and drove to the inn which the owner of the Inn to Inn company owns, to shower, since the owner of the place we stayed the first night didn't want to give us a room to do this... It was freezing out when we left, but the sun was coming out and by the time we were over the gap, the temperature was near 60.
I am glad I did this, and I am ready for the flat century I am doing next weekend. Tired though, and had to make phone calls in the car, on the way home, with emergencies and such that happened over the weekend.
I also have had bad and good on tours with others. We liked our Spain tour because it was a small group (10) and it was an international group, which cut down on the loud, ugly American drinking, which we had in the Czech Republic/Austria. We are going to do a tour with them, next fall, from Lisbon to the border of Spain.