Flat Tires Day 27 and 28

4/11/2015

Rode 69 miles

Rode approx. 6:54 hrs

4/12/2015

Rode 72 miles

Rode approx. 6:29 hrs

Started day by hitting the snooze button, beep, hand slaps phone, minutes later, beep, hand slaps phone again, process is repeated until 8:30.

Had a rough start to the morning, cycling slowly, could not get going until the heavy rains hit again. That motivated me to pedal harder, pushing down and pulling madly on the pedals, they spun like a blender on its side, while I tried in vain to out ride the rain!!!

I find it hard to dress for biking, sweating uphill, freezing downhill; of all the sports I find layering for cycling to be the most difficult!

Frantically searching for a hotel room to escape the rain again, I enlisted my support team (thanks again mom) to help me find a place. All the hotels on the ACA Map set I paid for were booked. I called one of the hotel chains 800 numbers, don’t remember which one, and the helpful lady who answered informed that there were multiple hotels available. Great … where?!? The closest was only 50 miles away. Hummm, well mama I am on a bike, a bicycle to be exact, is there anything closer? Luckily for me while I was on the phone my support team found something a lot closer! I hopped on my bike and pedaled to the hotel and what do you know, I caught up to a ACA group. How convenient, they leave the good places off their map set, at least the group offered me some food.

Looks like I am stuck in a storm system for the next week.

Pedaling uphill thru heavy traffic getting honked at and cursed, I decided to take a park road to escape all the wonderful human beings rushing around trying to run over me. I took Park Road 1A to 1C which had hardly any traffic, a wonderful juxtaposition to what I just endured.

I rode thru an old burn, skeletons of trees surrounded me, some still standing tall others scattered across the ground like dead soldiers after a battle.

I met a guy that sounded like Boomhauer off King Of The Hill. While I was eating, he stopped to talk to me. I think he was telling me to be careful because a school bus ran him off the rode into a tree twice.

Took the morning to mess around and watched TV until 9 ish. After spending so much time away from TV, I find that there is nothing new. I just zoned out not wanting to leave the room.

I only rode 72 miles today, got caught in heavy downpour and heard thunder so stopped at 5:30 at a campground. Got set up and the thunder died along with the rain. I don’t really miss the desert, but the lack of constant rain was nice. It was nice not having to jam news papers down my biking shoes to dry them out.