Day 8 of 17 Days of Texas. This was a long, long day. An eighty mile day into the wind, a wind that grew stronger every hour. Did a bit of paceline work in the morning and that helped, but the group finally broke up, partly because of the hills and partly because one of the riders tried to control us and was determined to “teach us how to do it right” (there were 5 of us doing just fine until he showed up). The 20 miles before checkpoint and all the rest of the miles after checkpoint I was on my own. At checkpoint there was a bbq place where Bob and I stayed for an hour eating, drinking coke and soaking up the air conditioning – I don’t think I would have made it otherwise. It was over 100 degrees and windy, even though I was beat and my head felt like mush, I passed a bunch of the guys on the way in, maybe the heat and wind was even harder on them. I focused only on peddling and getting to camp.
Finally arrived at the visitor center near the campground. They had cold drinks and air conditioning, several of us stayed for 40 minutes (until they closed). When I dragged into camp another mile down the road, I found that the best/close camping spots were taken by all the people who had sagged into camp. Some didn’t ride at all, some rode only about half before they took the van in. I was later told by a couple of riders who had been on a lot of bike tours, including other cross country trips, that this was the hardest day they had ever spent on a bicycle.
Dinner was also bad, there was no one who would will cater food for us out in the middle of nowhere, so the staff grilled up burgers and served salads. I don’t think they could have done much else, but I definitely needed more and better food to recover from that difficult day.
More of the same tomorrow, I’m worried.
83.3 miles - 11.5 avg mph - ouch!
During the night...
I’m trying to get to sleep, the wind has died, and it’s just sticky, still, hot and humid. I left my tent to sit on a nearby picnic table to get some air. Dave comes by and says “you’re sitting in my bedroom” he’s planning on sleeping on the picnic table tonight. I commented on the heat and said “where’s the wind when you need it” – be careful what you ask for… Very soon after that the wind picked up and we were in the middle of a tremendous wind storm, my tent was being severely buffeted about. I heard people talking outside, the crew was tearing down the food tents and trying to rescue everything they could by throwing it into the baggage truck. (I half thought “this is really bad, we’re going to ‘bug out’ – leave because a really huge storm was coming – I don’t know where we would have gone or how they would have got us there…) Rider tents were also collapsing because their poles were breaking. I finally got up and sat outside the bathroom, away from the wind, hoping it would calm down, because I certainly wasn’t going to get any sleep in my tent. I finally gave up at 2 a.m., took my tent down and hauled all my gear into the bathroom and slept on the floor. From then on we called it Hurricane Ridge.