Day 23 Pierre to Miller

Day 23 Pierre to Miller

Daily Essence - Here we go again. A.K.A. "They shoot horses don't they?"

We weren't so surpirsed by the dark wake-up this morning. Everything was soggy! I wasn't surprised that it was soggy, but by how soggy.

I pulled a "Liz" and rolled my tent up with my sunglasses stil in the pocket. Fortunately I realized it before packing my tent in my duffel so it was only a small amount of re-effort.

Breakfast was cold cereal for me in stead of standard oatmeal. Somehow the oatmeal didn't have the same appeal on such a warm muggy morning. Know what I mean?

We got rolling and our spirits were still buoyed by from Eric's hospitality from the night before. Climbing out of Pierre the hill sheet appeared to be accurate and we only had 75 miles to do. It was like a 25% off sale. That is how sick in the head we are getting to be. We are beginnig to expect Century rides and when they are leess than 100 miles, we consider the ride to be "discounted" or sort of like early dismissal at school when you were a kid!

The "scott train" didn't form as Soctt rode with Tom, who had been having severe knee problems the last few days. As a result, I go a crew goind with Alison and Kari and we got motoring. As you can see by my shoulder and the shadows on the ground, we had a 10 person train that I was pulling.

That was a lot of fun. And we even had the Dimmit's Tandem in the back.


Pictured are (My shoulder, Kari, Alison, Jodi, Dan Scott, Adam (Shadow Only) Margo, Lisa and Greg and Trish Dimmit).

We rolled down the road and sang and then I hosted tehe "Sluggish Pace: radio call-in show" where I took questions form various "callers" It was fun to see who listened to talk shows and had the whole "Long time listener, first time call" patter down.

Beyond that we rode.
and rode
and rode

People would drop off the "andy train" eventually until it was just back to Kari, Alison and I.



This water tower cae on the horizon and re rode towards it for an impossibly long 10 miles before passing it and coming to our water stop.

From there we only had 22 short miles to go in the, once again oppressive heat. By this time I had uysed most of my strength leading the first 50 miles and my mental fortitude to ride any further was just thrashed. Alison then took over pulling. At one point we, I saw Iron Mike and Bob pull out about 3/4 of a mile ahead of us and I knew it was my turn to relieve Alison, but I didn't have the drive to push us and real the guys in.

Well Alison, working out some stress, kept the lead and chewed and chewed and chewed into the headwind and reeled in Mike and Bob, who are some of the strongest fastest riders regularly pushing. She just hunted them down and it was so cool to watch and be a part of, especially knowing that I was burnt and couldn't have done it myself.

After that though we were all tired. I was started to doze off in the handlebarsa nd just wanted to lay down and take a nap on the side of the rode. To wakle up, I took the lead for the dreaded last 11 miles and got us in.

We found that the truck inside the school gyma nd unloaded in the shade. I proceeded to start a series of naps. the first was just 10 minutes on the cold concreete floor just beoyond the basketball floor int he gym. Then I moved into the trophy room, a carpeted AC cooled room that we had for the night to sleep in. From there I slept for 1.75 hours.

It was wonderful just to nap! We had gotten in about 1:00 so even after my nap it was only 3:00 pm. I had plenty of time to clean my bike, shower, repack for tomorrow etc, before dinner.

A group of us headed down tot he HyLite cafe for dinner, where (since I had missed lunch) I had 2 huge hamburgers, a salad and cottage cheese. On the way back, I stopped at the store for mixed nuts.

Finally after being fed and had a nap, I was happy. A little bit of journaling out on the front steps and then a good nights sleep in the AC.