102 miles in 7.83 hours – Max Speed 35mph
When I woke up the next morning, I heard the sound of rain on my tent. I sighed and tried to go back to sleep. I didn’t have any luck, but as I was laying there the rain slowed down to a drizzle. I figured that that was a good as it was going to get, so I got up and got packed. By the time I was done it had stopped raining, but I knew it was supposed to start again later in the Afternoon, so I got moving quickly.
The day involved a 100 mile ride over some mountains into Laramie, but there was the option of taking old route 30, adding around 10-15 miles on, but taking most of the mountains out of the ride. I set off not knowing which I would decide to take.
It was a pretty easy ride to where the 30 broke off from the 80, so I arrived pretty quickly. After a brief thought, I figured that with rain coming I would stick to the interstate, so I hopped back on the bike and got going. There was also a sign at this intersection saying ‘No Services 75 Miles’. Oh well, that’s fine, I have plenty of food and water.
I reached the first big hill (you can always tell where the hills are because they add a third truck lane to the interstate there) and just pounded up it in my middle ring. Not good for my knees I know, but it was much faster than spinning up it in the granny.
That mountain probably saved my butt. See how the clouds have to go through it. I think it was breaking up a lot of the rain clouds as they drifted by, and they had to rain quite a bit to get high enough to get over it.
I went over a few more hills and then at the top of the biggest hill on the first range (there were two today) I stopped at a rest area. Stopping at a rest area on interstates is always fun because lots of people usually come up and talk to you, and today was no exception. Someone gave me a bunch of granola bars (not really necessary, but thanks!) and I talked to a few others while I ate a ‘lunch’ up there.
The only problem with interstate riding is that people always walk up to you and open with the line ‘I saw you on the road’. I mean, people will do that on regular roads too, but not nearly as often. And I never was smart enough to have a clever or witty retort to that line that wasn’t a little rude, so I would just stand there awkwardly and end up saying something like ‘yup’.
Anyway, I got going in a hurry because I saw some mean looking clouds creeping in, and sure enough, around 5 miles after my rest area, it began to rain on me. I sighed, put on my rain clothes, and got back on the bike. Then, 5 minutes after that, it stopped raining on me. I didn’t trust the weather though, so I left my rain clothes on for as long as I could without dieing of heat stroke. Eventually I had to take them off, but the rain continued to stay away.
As I got over the second range and drifted down into Laramie the sun actually came out for an extended period. I got into town, stopped at a KOA, did some laundry, showered, ate, and did a little work on the computer. Because I had pushed it as hard as I could, it was only 3:00 or so when I got there despite the distance and the hills.
I realized that I only took one picture that day, so I took another and made a video apologizing to everyone. The other thing you can notice in the video is how extremely badly I got burned that day. It wasn’t super sunny, but I think when you spend all day over 8000 feet the thin air makes you much more susceptible to burns.
Haha. Because my gloves were soaked and gross from the night before I rode without today. You can see the tan dots on my hand where the sun shines through the holes of my old gloves, and the horrible sunburn over the rest of my hand. That hurt for a while.
As you can see my hands really got it also. I winced for the next week every time I had to get something out of my pockets. After I washed up and brushed the teeth that night I saw a tremendous lightning storm, so took a quick video of that. I don’t think all the flashes really showed up in the camera, but it looks fairly cool none the less.
With all that taken care of, I got into the tent and went to sleep.
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