Diary

Mileage:  117 miles (189 kms)

Elevation Change:  3106 feet  (947 meters)

Weather:  hot, hot, HOT!

Morale:  epic

Incidents:  finished our hardest day yet

Daily Summary:

Our hardest day yet!  Why?  The distance:  117 miles.  The temperature:  over 100.  The headwind:  30+ mph straight from the east.   Nothing to look at, no place to stop, not a speck of shade for over 100 miles.  Song of the day?  Devils and Dust by Bruce Springsteen.   Our group was devastated.  Only a handful made it all the way.  The rest got rides from the support vehicles, or the highway patrol, or (in two cases) ambulances, or hitchhiked. 

 

We rolled out before 6am this morning.  The terrain was devilishly rolling.  The downs weren’t long or steep enough to help with the ups, so it seemed we were always climbing.  The scenery was mind numbing.  You could see the road ahead for miles and miles, as you crested over a hill you could see for more miles and miles.  Always the same.  We went through a handful of tiny towns spread out over the 117 mile distance.  Christopher rode a single bike with Andy, the ride leader, until the first SAG at mile 33.  Ray and I felt good after two relatively easy days, so made good time on the tandem.  We met up again with Chris at SAG 2, which he was helping run.  By then it was 9:30 am and the temperature was already beastly hot.  But we kept rolling well through mile 77.  That’s where the road turns east above, straight into the hurricane headwind.  Our speed dropped in half, and we were happy to crank out 10-12 mph.  We had 35 miles to go!  It was very, very difficult both physically and mentally, but we did it.  We finally crossed the Missouri River and rolled into our hotel at 2pm, totally trashed.  It was really 3pm, though, as we lost an hour changing time zones. 

 

Pierre (pronounced “Peer”—I kid you not), is the capital of South Dakota.  It has a population of only 13,000, and there doesn’t seem to be much going on here. . 

 

We have a very nice room tonight—a 2 room suite to spread out in.  We also won the laundry lottery today.  That is, we got 2 whole loads done before the laundry room was overrun by our teammates.  Ray and Chris managed to float around in the pool a bit while I did laundry.  It’s definitely early to bed tonight!

 

In the pictures below, you see the great scenery we had all day.  Then our favorite sign of the day:  Land of Infinite Variety??!!   This is a joke, right?  By the time we got to this International Airport we were ready to catch a flight to Paris.  Seems like crop dusting is the bigger business than international flights, though.  Note the wind sock.  We were heading right, of course!