Tough 72 to Winnemucca with rumble divot trauma............

Today in Pictures

Up at 4AM. On the road at 5:15 after I attended to a pedal that had gotten loose. And I didn’t stop pumping this 85+ pound fixed gear until almost 3PM. Big gut suck. And I was hammering so hard that I drank all the water I had aboard with 35 miles left to go. And ate all the food I brought along save one energy bar………….

And as I said in my Facebook post, I need hotel lodging to clean up, and recover. The reason I am getting so beat up is because I am either pedaling a 2 or 3% uphill grade and sometimes more. Or I am going down the same graded descent and I have to pedal it since the downhill stuff is not steep enough to rest my legs by coasting. And it’s hot out here. High 80’s all day………..

The above said, my dollars are rapidly dwindling. My food and drink needs have soared and along with the hotel expense, my per-Diem is now easily $100 a day. Ugh. At this rate, my ride is gonna end pretty soon. Unless there is dollar help ………….

On the road today, tho I didn’t stop for him, one guy knelt down in the middle of I-80 to get a series of shots of me going by. It was uphill so all I could do was drop my business card for him.

A while later, just as my 100-ounce Camelbak started to go dry, a guy in his 20's in a red pick-up, with a bike in back, pulled over well ahead of me and waited. Since he was at mile marker 150 and I took a short break at every 10th mile, I stopped and talked to him.

When I told David Weidinger I was dangerously low on water, he filled up everything I had and even threw in a couple of vitamin waters! An engineer doing field work out here, he showed me a leech mountain that he patrols among his many other duties. He explained that the way they mine for gold now is by pouring a solution over rocks that have been left in a pile on such leech fields and letting that bond with the silver or gold or whatever they are looking for as the chemical then extracts it. Wow!

10 minutes later I was back pumping the pedals when a few hours later and maybe 90 minutes from Winnemucca where I now am, another guy took to the pavement for a shot. Only this was not just another photographer. I found out who he was because Dale just so happened to be at at one of my ten mile rest stops. Besides the fact that he did professional work for a number of well known magazines, he went around the world on a bicycle from 1990 to  1992. While doing so he saw well over 50 different countries and was even joined by his wife, who is now a doctor, for a large percentage of the journey.

He invited me to come stay with him in S Lake Tahoe if I ever get there again. And we had so much in common, that I know we'll be doing a lot of work together going forward when my trip is done......

It wasn't long after I left him that the rumble divots that cursed the beginning of I-80 for me in Reno, now fill the entire bike lane every 20 feet. And this has been the case for the last ten miles. Too wretched -- as in what could be worse.....

THX for all of U!!