Bill PSA:
I should preface this by saying that I have been truly fortunate on this trip. It hasn't poured on me past the first day, and in retrospect I've probably gotten more good weather than bad. Despite that, this is a daily blog, and none of those reasonable thoughts were anywhere near my head this day.
What, you didn't think I would be cheerful and bright every day did you?
P.S. I think I figured out this MapMyRide bug. At times, with absolutely no warning, it starts considering the GPS signal as being too low quality to use (despite the fact that it is tracking me just fine) and stops recording. If I stop the ride for a minute it will reacquire location and correct itself, though all the ride details in between the loss and reacquire are lost. Better than nothing I suppose...
So yeah, headwinds are of the devil. Gone was my beautiful tailwind from yesterday and instead I had a full frontal headwind, ranging from meek to stiff. Which is perfect, because today's ride was only going to be 150km/90mi... Fine. I gritted my teeth and pushed through it, trying to get back some of that speed from yesterday. I was making good progress until...
I hit the Craters of the Moon area. I don't understand what is so important about these stupid rocks. They look useless, nothing grows there, and I can't even see why anyone would want to visit. Regardless, this HUGE area is specially taken care of by the government, and as such the road got pushed into the mountain. Since this was right at the end of my ride I was already exhausted (pushing hard through a headwind for 80km/50mi will do that to you) and the fact that I was now climbing made my mood quickly deteriorate. And then it started raining.
When I say raining, I mean that it would rain a little, increasing in intensity until I put my rain gear on, and then abruptly stop and the sun would come out. When I put the gear away it started raining again, increasing in intensity until I had to grab the gear and ... you guessed it, stopped again. I eventually just left the gear on and that seemed work to ward against any type of precipitation...
Of course, I eventually crested the mountain, which is when the headwind picked back up. Somehow my inarticulate cry of impotent rage seemed to cause it to quickly dissipate, for which I was very grateful.
Anyway, when I got to Arco I made a beeline for the diner and devoured a burger. The cool thing, though, was that I got to talk to a local retiree, Dennis, who told me all about Arco. Apparently, it was the first city in the entire world to be run by nuclear power, for instance. He also told me about another lady he met who was on tour years ago by horseback! Apparently she wanted to travel to Texas, so she took two of her horses (one for riding and the other for her packs) and just went. It must have taken her half a year if not longer, as she only covered 20 miles or so a day.
After dinner I headed over to the WarmShowers location, the home of Scar Stigr. This one seemed more sketch than usual, especially in the dark. I couldn't reach him beforehand, but it said that showing up with no notice and pitching a tent was fine, so I did. Can't say I slept that soundly though.
... Neither did the editorial assistant after receiving this text from our intrepid Terrapin:
Camping at 2436n, 3000w in the town, home of scar stigr. Little more sketch than usual, wanted to document.
Now, if there's something you don't want to hear from your kid who's thousands of miles away, it's that he feels the need to document his location before he goes to sleep!
I checked out Scar's page at WarmShowers and it seems he's a retired vet who lets people camp for free on his land. I think he just doesn't want to assume liability, but I can see where this sign would have given Bill pause as he pulled into camp late at night:
I should preface this by saying that I have been truly fortunate on this trip. It hasn't poured on me past the first day, and in retrospect I've probably gotten more good weather than bad. Despite that, this is a daily blog, and none of those reasonable thoughts were anywhere near my head this day.
What, you didn't think I would be cheerful and bright every day did you?
P.S. I think I figured out this MapMyRide bug. At times, with absolutely no warning, it starts considering the GPS signal as being too low quality to use (despite the fact that it is tracking me just fine) and stops recording. If I stop the ride for a minute it will reacquire location and correct itself, though all the ride details in between the loss and reacquire are lost. Better than nothing I suppose...
So yeah, headwinds are of the devil. Gone was my beautiful tailwind from yesterday and instead I had a full frontal headwind, ranging from meek to stiff. Which is perfect, because today's ride was only going to be 150km/90mi... Fine. I gritted my teeth and pushed through it, trying to get back some of that speed from yesterday. I was making good progress until...
I hit the Craters of the Moon area. I don't understand what is so important about these stupid rocks. They look useless, nothing grows there, and I can't even see why anyone would want to visit. Regardless, this HUGE area is specially taken care of by the government, and as such the road got pushed into the mountain. Since this was right at the end of my ride I was already exhausted (pushing hard through a headwind for 80km/50mi will do that to you) and the fact that I was now climbing made my mood quickly deteriorate. And then it started raining.
When I say raining, I mean that it would rain a little, increasing in intensity until I put my rain gear on, and then abruptly stop and the sun would come out. When I put the gear away it started raining again, increasing in intensity until I had to grab the gear and ... you guessed it, stopped again. I eventually just left the gear on and that seemed work to ward against any type of precipitation...
Of course, I eventually crested the mountain, which is when the headwind picked back up. Somehow my inarticulate cry of impotent rage seemed to cause it to quickly dissipate, for which I was very grateful.
Anyway, when I got to Arco I made a beeline for the diner and devoured a burger. The cool thing, though, was that I got to talk to a local retiree, Dennis, who told me all about Arco. Apparently, it was the first city in the entire world to be run by nuclear power, for instance. He also told me about another lady he met who was on tour years ago by horseback! Apparently she wanted to travel to Texas, so she took two of her horses (one for riding and the other for her packs) and just went. It must have taken her half a year if not longer, as she only covered 20 miles or so a day.
After dinner I headed over to the WarmShowers location, the home of Scar Stigr. This one seemed more sketch than usual, especially in the dark. I couldn't reach him beforehand, but it said that showing up with no notice and pitching a tent was fine, so I did. Can't say I slept that soundly though.
... Neither did the editorial assistant after receiving this text from our intrepid Terrapin:
Camping at 2436n, 3000w in the town, home of scar stigr. Little more sketch than usual, wanted to document.
Now, if there's something you don't want to hear from your kid who's thousands of miles away, it's that he feels the need to document his location before he goes to sleep!
I checked out Scar's page at WarmShowers and it seems he's a retired vet who lets people camp for free on his land. I think he just doesn't want to assume liability, but I can see where this sign would have given Bill pause as he pulled into camp late at night:
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