Day 22, 120 miles, Lemar, CO - An Anniversary

Today is my Mom and Dad’s 62^nd wedding anniversary. I admire their constancy. Congratulations, Mom and Dad.

Water. I thought alot about water today. When we crossed the Arkansas River today, the frolicking flirting high energy maiden that cut through the canyon a few days ago had become slow, matronly, and swollen with silt. It would be dropped on a flood plain to birth the next season’s harvest. Water and the lack of it lie in stunning contrast; one side of the road lush, the other a barren dust bowl. The green/brown edge is sharp, the width of a hoe. You can see this in the picture where a circular arm irrigator (a sprinkler pipe fed with water from the middle that rotates slowly over the crop) delineates the circle of life (double click on the picture at right and you'll see the irrigation pipe parallel to the horizon. Outside its reach, nothing grows. Next time you fly over the country, look for big green circles in the dessert. That’s what I’m talking about. Land without water is worthless in Colorado. When you buy land, you have to buy water rights, or you have nothing but dust. I crossed the Arkansas River a third time. Half the former width and speed, she’d been bled for irrigation.

This is perverse, but I love the salt lines that form on my shorts and gloves. The salt is left as the perspiration evaporates to re-enter the water cycle. Lots of salt = a hard ride. The salt appears “magically” in Colorado; the air is so dry that sweat never appears, it is dried as fast as I can make it. This makes dehydration a real danger, since sweat is the usual clue to drink. So I drink by distance. Every 5 miles, I take a swig. The water in my bottles, though warm as temperature-abused food in a cheap buffet, goes rapidly. There are extra sag stops so that we can keep them filled. Arriving at the hotel, I plopped directly into the pool. The water was good.

I also thought about what makes for a “difficult ride.” In spite of the distance (120 miles) or the time (I started at 6 a.m. and hit the hotel at 3 p.m.) today was not a particularly difficult day. If it hadn’t been for the heat, it wouldn’t have been difficult at all. At first approximation, Ride Difficulty (RD) can be see as:

RD = x(distance) + y(wind) + z (grade*length of climb) + a(temperature) +

b(precipitation) + c(RD of previous day)

where the letters are weighting factors which remain to be determined. This is the crudest of models since there are significant interactions (wind) (grade*length of climb). It would take a real modeler like my collaborator, Prof. Schaffner, to figure this out, but we can’t publish it or use it as preliminary data for a grant application, so it won’t get done. I do have full data for several rides in my Garmand cycle computer. Perhaps we could have Silvia work it up as part of her PhD qualifying exam….

The longest single day ride I’ve ever done is 130 miles. The 120 I rode today is within striking distance. I thought of riding extra miles to break the record, but once I got to the hotel, I decided to let the record stand.

I've just discovered that I can specify fonts and have changed from Courier to Arial, my favorite font. Does anybody care? Use the comment function.

Very bad news: A few miles before sag stop #2, one of our riders, for no apparent reason, fell over and hit his head on the pavement. He was rushed back to Pueblo by ambulance and is now in ICU. Please say a little prayer for him.