Day 18: I knew it would be a challenging day; 120 miles is seldom easy. Therefore, Julie and I recruited Rich to ride with us. Luckily, Chris wanted to be on our team as well. We had breakfast at the hotel restaurant away from the rest of the group and ordered our individual food that would give us the most power. I ordered an extra French toast to go, great to snack on during the ride. We did not see Ed, whom we would have liked to join us. We started out fine, with a 15 mile/hour pace line, through a beautiful sunrise and the following hour.
Then the wind kicked up from three directions, right, left and front, never from our back. Our speed went down to 11-13 miles/hour, and we took turns every 0.5 miles at the front of each rotation of the pace line. The fantastically beautiful views that we have had all the way from Astoria are now gone. Here it is flat. Flat, flat prairie with straight roads as far as the eye can see. We went through towns, two of them with a listed population of 10.
We reached the SAG stop at mile 62, at 11am. Even though the riding had looked flat, we had been gradually climbing for about 50 miles and had been working hard. Only 58 miles more to go, and we would be there. We ate at a cafe/store that had a bit of everything; tables for sit-down eating, the owner's/manager's office in one corner, souvenirs and cute knickknacks for sale in every corner, a snake in a display case (luckily I had my back to it while eating), and food and drinks to go.
As we were getting ready to take off, Ed showed up. Being a stronger rider, he had slept in an hour knowing that he probably would catch us, and he did. We kept our positive attitude and all put in our little requests for it not to be as hot as yesterday (101 degrees), a little descent of 1% or something, and for the winds to calm down. And guess what, almost all our wishes came through. The landscape, flat and with nothing to look at, continued, but our speed picked up a lot at times because the wind died down. We arrived at the hotel at 4:15. During the day we had seen many animals, including prairie dogs, pronghorn antelope, dead snakes, and even one large live snake in the middle of the shoulder. I am amazed that I can now ride by a live snake without falling off my bike!
A terrific ending to this very special and different 4th of July was to find Dianne and Marcus waiting at the hotel for my arrival. They drove 4 1/2 hours from Denver to meet me and spend my rest day with me. They brought a couple of extra chains for me as well as another sleeveless jersey. I will send some of my warm clothes home with them.
They joined our group for our Mexican dinner, met many of my friends, and were introduced at our evening ride-information meeting. Julie's husband Jeff had also driven up from Boulder, CO to be with her and joined us. Being the 4th of July, the City of Casper was having a fireworks show on a hill near our hotel. We watched from my room while munching on fresh raspberries. A light thunderstorm moved in, and the lightning show was at times even more spectacular than the fireworks show.
Day 19: This was such a needed day off. It's been 707 miles since the last rest day. Many of these miles took us up and over large mountain passes and into areas with heat up to 101 degrees. I spent the day running around Casper with Dianne and Marcus. We explored the downtown area, which didn't offer much, but it did have a nice art museum considering the small size of the town. The museum featured art from Wyoming and Montana artists. We also had my pictures developed at Walmart. Marcus helped me pick out a new bicycle while we waited. This bicycle, complete with streamers, full suspension and a glitter paint job, will make the rest of the ride a breeze. Afterwards, we stopped for coffee and lunch.
