113 miles. Let me say that again 113 MILES! Wow.
I don't think I have ever dreamed I would bicycle that far. Today was a tough ride. Mentally is was just so draining. We knew it would be long, hot and there wouldn't be much along the way to distract us or support us. As you can see.
It was tough day, starting with 8 miles of construction. There was a lot of of concern for that the night before. They changed the blinker board for us and we got moved to the front of the PILOT CAR group.
AFter getting through the construction the rest of the day seemed to start.
I actually had a a good ride. A lot of what makes it a good ride is being mentally prepared the moment you awake in the morning. We knew we would have to work together to make it healthily and even make it fun. 2 of the groups that I usally ride with "The Scott Train" and "The kids" joined and we rode as a herd down the road for miles and miles. No traffic so we fanned out 4 abreast and 3 deep or so as we were 11 or 12 riders strong.
As weaker riders would fall off on the hillclimbs, I would drop back to pick them up and pull them back to the big group. Riding in such a gorup made teh day so much easier. We became the crazy singing peleton and jsut got each other across the miles.
One of the hardest things about a ride like that, where it is so boring and flat
Is that the mental boredom is just so oppressing. You ride for hours. ...and hours ...and hours. You look at your odometer and see that you have ridden 50 miles. On a normal Century day, you would be 1/2 done. But we still had 63 mile to go. We weren't even close to 1/2 done.
At 63 miles we still had 50 miles to go. And you start to wonder will it ever end.
At 73 miles, we realize that earlier days the whle day s was only 77 miles and we should be almost done by comparisson. But, no, we still had 40 bleak miles and 3 hours to go. And then it becomes drudgery.
Finally at about 100 miles we get to the outskirts of Gillette and there are things to see. The open pit coal mine as super Loader runnig around full of coal. Well where you have super truck, you need super tires. I saw this Tire yard and turned it into a scenic stop.
I went in the office and asked how much these cost. These tire cost between $15,000-$17,000 each! Each loader takes 6 tires. For the Big tires that need to be imported from Russia the tires cost $80,000 each! The owner said that he had $6M in tire inventory in the yard. I believe it.
Well being in coal country we have been seeing these incredibly 100+ car trains that are all full of Coal. SEE.
And we see several of these trains a day.
We found our way into the City park and set up camp. Camp felt very exposed. Gillette is actually, quite a busy and growing city as they have Coal, oil and Methane mining going in the area. The Town has a busy city feel to it that we are all used to back home. But it is that feel where you don't know the neighbors and you lock your doors at night.
Not a great night. Dinner was another $10 night, which I really dislike. After such a long ride, to then have to come home, build home, and then go in search of food, where you don't know where anyhing is, you want to resisit fastfood and don't have great transportation (WE are not riding one more in on a bicylce till tomorrow) makes $10 really tough. But I punted and found some food. I had a Subway earlier in the day that hadn't really agreed with my stomach so for dinner I went for mexican comfort food of a burrito and it was okay.
Ultimately we went to bed early, tired from the day but trying to block out the sounds or the skaters at the skate park and just drift off to sleep.
At 2:30 a.m. someone went screaming through camp yeling FIRE! FIRE! FIRE! PUT IT OUT! FIRE! Suddenly I wasn't aslepp anymore! And apparenlty about 20 other riders weren't either. Zippers were opening, velcro was ripping. Although I was up, I was completely disoriented and trying to determine where teh threat was. All the street lights were sodium vapor and thus had that amber color so it took a minute to eliminate that as teh threat. Still trying to remember where I was, other than inside my tent, I was up and ready but not quite sure what to run from. I poked my head out of the tent and saw not fire. I decided it a prank... a rude prank but a prank and used the opportunity to go use the restroom in the middle of the night.
Finally we got back to sleep about 3:15. What a nasty little distraction.
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