* Miles ridden on the TransAm route
Odometer miles - Today - 80.1 Total to date - 750.3 miles
We're not in Kansas any more
Another 80 mile day – as bad today
as yesterday was good.
We woke up early again and started
riding at 6:00am. A quick look at the
flag near the church showed fairly strong, swirling winds generally from the
SW. We knew we were in for a tough day.
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| Heading towards Colorado in the early morning light. |
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| The sun rising through the low haze behind us. |
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| We entered Mountain Time Zone at the Greeley County, KS line. |
As usual, I rode with Wendy, Gina,
and Judy. The wind in the first 22 mile
segment to Tribune slowed our speed to barely 10mph. We stopped at a truck stop in
Tribune which had all the requisite facilities – drinks, restrooms, ice
machine, tables to sit inside in air conditioned comfort. While there we chatted with a couple of truck
drivers. One driver said he was driving an
oversized rig carrying a huge pipe which is the base for a wind generator. We were passed by a couple of these yesterday
and his was sitting in the parking lot.
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| The base of a wind turbine on its way to Limon, CO. |
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| The Chatterbox Cafe in Tribune, KS - relocated from Lake Wobegon, MN? |
After our second breakfast we
headed out to the prospect of more headwinds on a long desolate stretch of
road. The immediate goal was the
Colorado state line in 16 miles. As the
sun rose the morning cloud layer disappeared and the temperature rose. It wasn’t as hot as a couple of days earlier,
but there was full sun beating down on us.
We stopped for pictures at the Colorado welcome sign, then headed on to
our next segment.
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| Me, Paul, Wendy, Judy and Gina entering Colorado |
After the state line we expected
to find another convenience store in 14 miles at Sheridan Lake. To our great disappointment, after plodding
along through the heat and headwinds we found the one convenience store was
closed on Sunday. Paul looked around a
bit and found a firehouse with a spigot outside and a 6 foot strip of shade on
one side. That served as our second
“big” rest stop.
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| Old Ford pickup at the "rest stop" in Sheridan Lake, CO |
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| "Welcome cyclists" - but not on Sunday |
Fortunately, we got a call from
Nicole who said she was on her way to give us a rest stop in our remaining 28
mile stretch to Eads. She met us about 8
miles down the road with ice and some drinks.
At the same time she took our orders for dinner in Eads. It turned out when she got to town there was
only one restaurant open and it was closing at 2:00pm. So she stopped there about 1:00pm, placed our
orders and got our dinner.
To our great delight and
salvation, the winds shifted around noon and we had a tail wind the last 18
mile stretch from our rest stop into Eads. We arrived about 3:30pm Central time, making it a 9.5 hour day on the road. I'm hoping this will turn out to be our longest and toughest day of the trip.
We spent the night at the
Kiowa County Fairgrounds on the north edge of Eads. There’s very little of anything in Eads, but
there’s a very large metal building at the fairgrounds with a large open
concrete floor and air conditioning. So we’re dry and comfortable inside, though
as I write this there’s a thunderstorm with pretty heavy rain going on
outside. Sure is great to have this day
behind us.
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| The spacious interior of our overnight accommodations in Eads, CO |
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| My "bedroom" in Eads |
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| The van outside our accommodations in Eads |
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