The morning was fine -- manageble hills with enough downhill to catch a second breath and get rested for the next hill. The worst part was having to ride through almost 500m of freshly-poured chip and tar: our side of the road had been gravelled minutes before and the truck was pouring gravel on the other side of the road as we rode by.
We stopped for lunch at St Mary's Memorial Church in Tiki Tiki which had some beautiful wood-carving inside.
The afternoon was a different story: the hills were steeper and longer, the air hotter and the winds stronger. I dreamt of Rommey galloping to my rescue. Fortunately for me, I misread the "Hills for next 8 km" sign to mean "Bumpy roads for 8 km" or I would've sat in the middle of the road and bawled like a baby. Unfortunately, Fran and I both thought it felt like one 8-km hill.
But we finally made it into the Hicks Bay Motel, which was the exact opposite of Brian's Place. It was a large, motel complex with cookie-cutter adjoining units and a parking lot full of cars and motor boats. We had two units with each unit having a deck, kitchen, living room, bathroom and 2 bedrooms. They even had a TV (which we never bothered turning on).
Robert, with Eric's assistance, whipped up creamed-corn, egg-drop soup as a starter, with stir-fried chicken and vegetables in noodle soup as the entree. Spicy and delicious! We even got room-service since no one unit had a table big enough to fit all eight of us and the chefs were in the other unit.
Throughout the night we could hear the wind rattling the door latches and buffeting the building.
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