The plan for the day is the same as last year, meet at 10 am in Fitchburg to ride to lunch at Seven Acres Dairy in Paoli. Last year it poured just after we arrived for lunch, and this year it is also going to rain, just a little later in the day.

The ride is a little different this year, it’s an approximately 33-mile loop that you can ride multiple times. There is also a 20-mile shortcut available. There is one remote rest stop with food and porta-potties and then another back at Trek headquarters.

We start the day with a ride from the East Madison Trek store at 8am. Then we head to the Trek headquarters in Waterloo, WI for lunch and an early afternoon tour of the Project One portion of the factory.

Today we start the official tour with the welcome briefing.

We had breakfast in the hotel and talked with our trip leader even though the tour officially starts tomorrow. He told us that last night was the Lotus Lantern Festival Parade for Buddha’s Birthday celebration. The lanterns are still hanging at the Jogyesa Temple. The street in front of it would be shut down today and booths set up selling food and other items. The festival is on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List.

We planned to arrive one day early for our guided tour of Korea and Japan. This will allow us to get through the 14 hour time difference. We have been getting up one hour earlier each of the past four days. We get up at 3 am the morning we leave to catch a 3:50 am ride to the airport for our first flight to SFO.

We have been to Half Moon Cay in the past.

Donna wanted to go to Coral World Ocean Park. We booked a shore excursion from the ship which included transportation and the entrance fee.

We wanted to go to the beach on St. Kitts, and had originally decided to go to Cockleshell beach on the south end of the island, but the wind was fairly strong from the south and we were worried about the swell being bad. We decided at the last minute to try South Friar’s Beach which might be a little more protected.

Our ship docked at the commercial dock instead of the cruise ship dock, but the ship had some shuttles available for minimal cost if you wanted to go over to the other dock. We hired a bird guide, Bertrand Jno Baptiste, also known as Dr. Birdy, and he took us and two others to the Syndicate Trail for the day. He is very good at identifying the local birds and other animals.