Day 7, 70 miles, somewhere in Nevada

This will be short because I'm tired. Just look at the picture, that tired. We rode 70 miles against 15 mile headwinds. In keeping with the be positive theme, here is the top ten list of good things about headwinds.

10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1

Do you get the picture? There is nothing good about headwinds. Except perhaps that I learned to ride in a double pace line. A double pace line works like this: Imagine a long rectangle formation of cyclists with the wind coming from the left. The riders on the left break the wind for the riders on the right. Thus, the riders on the right side move faster, the ones on the left fall back. When a rider reaches the front of the right side, he switches left, and drops back. When the last rider on the left side sees that the last spot on the right side has moved up, that rider moves to the right. If that's too complicated, just think of it as cyclists moving in a counter clockwise rotating rectangle. It does, as you might imagine, require lots of concentration on the part of all the riders, but the payoff is high. If rider fought that headwind alone, she'd go maybe 10 mph. If she was in a single pace line, it would be 12 mph. In a double pace line, it gets above 15 mph. I was one of 16 cyclists in a double pace line. It was very cool. I learned a new cylcing skill.

After riding all day, there was work to me done. I took my laundry over to the truck stop. Somehow, I didn't seem to fit in, but when I started to whine about needing clean clothes to continue riding my bicycle to New Hampshire, they let me use the washing machines in the "professional drivers" area. while the clothes were in the washer,I rode to the local bike store to get some supplies. They thought that I (a x country rider) was the most exciting thing that happened in their shop all week. (but it didn't get me a discount). When I got back, everything went into the drier (screw that "line dry" instructions on my shorts). Everything went in on "delicate" (a rarely used setting in the truck stop) and every ten minutes, items that were dry got pulled. Fortunately there were no truckers to make fun of my spandex shorts or flashy jerseys. Then the laundry had to be folded, resorted, and packed. Thanks what life on the road is like. (I only have to pack and unpack 45 more times.)

The scenery is 7.5 on a scale of ten. The brown foothills go on for miles, with some variation when the clouds change their color or when snow caps the tall ones. All in all, it's brown and dry. Much different from the lush green and babbling brooks of a few days ago.

Today isn't Chris' birthday, nor Karen's. ; - )