Too tired to cook after cycling all day

You soon learn that the comfort of an extra sweater, long pants or other clothing isn't worth the struggle of lugging it over hill after hill.

So when Mary Tiller and Amanda Barnett set out on their cross-country trip from Anacortes, Washington, to Bar Harbor, Maine, they quickly decided to send back their camp stove and pans to lighten the load.

Interviewed by the Sharon (Mass.) Advocate after their return home, cross-country cyclists Tiller and Barnett said that tuna or PB&J sandwiches didn't seem that bad. Said Tiller:

“We were so tired at the end of the day that we didn't want to cook.”

Mailing home the pots and pans and stove had another benefit. Tiller said. Passersby who saw them eating on the sidewalk outside a grocery store would sometimes ask what they were doing, then offer them a home-cooked meal and a place to pitch their tent.

The pair made the cross-country bicycle trip to raise money for World Relief to support the victims of the tsunami that hit South Asia in December 2004.