It's 8:43 and I'm in bed wishing I was sleeping instead of blogging! I know you're thinking all I did was ride 92 miles today, surely I have a bit of time to blog! I was up at 5:30 today, breakfast at 6:15, load the van with our luggage at 7:15 and then we rode out of town. By 9:35 we were at the first sag stop and we were averaging 18 mph. Sweet! I was thinking maybe it wouldn't be so bad to ride 92 miles! But then the wind entered the arena and things changed. We had a head wind quite a bit of the time although not constantly. We were riding on I-80 for over half of our mileage today. It wasn't so bad since there is a nice big shoulder and most of the way there was a rumble strip between us and the traffic. But going forever on the freeway means no stopping at lights or stop signs, no making turns, little variability. That's great in some ways but it also means you tend to be on the saddle a lot with few breaks and your body is in one position a lot of the time. As Fiona said today, we were feeling it a bit in the undercarriage. She also hit a low point where she was a bit desperate for a frappuccino. "11,000 Starbucks and where are they?" as we rode past the exit for Jessup, NV. No services. We counted down the miles to the second SAG stop, then counted down the remaining miles on the freeway, then counted down the miles on the frontage road until we arrived in Lovelock. We stopped at the first petrol station we spied to ask about the best milkshakes in town. Turns out they made fruit smoothies so we settled for that instead. Tasty and cold! By the time we finished we were both shivering but happy! We had another mile to go to the hotel and finished that up quickly. We were checked in by 4. Then I looked for the laundromat but others beat me to the machines so I returned to my room and handwashed 7 pair of socks, two jerseys, a pair of shorts, a sports bra, and the sleeves to my jacket/vest. Time to go to "route rap" where we talk about what is coming up tomorrow, then we were off to dinner. I had the prime rib special which involved a salad, baked potato, roll, vegetables, and a sizeable slice of prime rib. I finished everything except the meat. Back to the room, pack as much as possible for tomorrow since we are loading the van at 6:15, stretch because that didn't happen earlier, check email, blog, and try to get to bed!
The view of Sparks from our motel room. We were on the 6th floor. All the other places we have been on the ground floor. Easier with bikes!
Where we spent a lot of our day!
There was a lot of this!
And this! There is the beauty of the vast open spaces for sure and nice to see some cool cloud formations and mountains on the horizons and all but it is desert. I told Fiona about sagebrush and tumbleweeds.
Sag stop! Gnorman was excited to eat Nutella on Ritz crackers. I gobbled down the orange slices. With the wind and the sun I felt like all the moisture was being sucked out of my body!
Clean but wet socks! Hope they dry well by morning! They probably will end up in a ziploc bag to continue drying tomorrow.
On to Winnemucca in the morning!
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