June 14
51 miles from Pickstown to Snake Creek Park west of Platte.
Hills and headwind- that's all you need to know about today. On paper, it looked pretty easy. In reality, we rode northwest for 51 miles with a wind that started at over 20 mph and continued to get stronger throughout the day the entire way.
I had counted on the hills to be a buffer for the wind, but instead it was a 1-2 punch that kept me in first gear almost the entire day. Downhills offered no relief since you couldn't coast without stopping and most downhills still required an effort in second or maybe third gear.
The last 14 miles from Platte to the Snake Creek campground were an exercise in pain that saw hill after hill threaten to bring me to a stop. I did stop on a level surface at one point to eat my least energy gel and watched a red winged blackbird flying absolutely nowhere for the better part of 30 seconds. Neither of us were making much progress.
Rumor has it that some folks started as early as 4 am in order to beat the wind. We drove back from Yankton that morning, so I wasn't able to get started until nearly 7:30.
Rumor also has it that I was on the front page of the Argus Leader on Monday, but I have yet to see it for myself. I heard a couple of other riders say it when I passed them, but I thought they were talking about someone else. Then a few other guys I had stopped with said they had seen it. Hopefully someone will be able to snag me a copy.
A little later...
We ran into Becky Ryder tonight when we went to get ice cream. I student taught under Becky at Vermillion Jr. High 10 years ago and haven't seen her for years. It was great to catch up with her and she was able to confirm that it was me in the paper.
We talked to the nice lady at the info center and she said to call the paper and they would mail us a copy of Monday's paper. She also said we might be able to order a print of the photo which might look nice framed with the century patches that I'll have from Sunday and Friday's rides.
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