Bad Weather!

This morning, for the first time in twenty five years, I got stopped by a cop. When I first saw him, he had a semi traveling the opposite direction pulled over. A mile or so later he puts on his siren for a moment and pulls me over. He was a nice guy, and just wanted me to ride further to the right on the roads' shoulder. "These guys driving the trucks don't care about you. They'd just as soon make you a hood ornament as go around you. You don't want to be a hood ornament do you?"

I'm thinking this guy has no idea of what I've done, how far I've ridden, or even of how to ride a bike on a busy road. But I keep my big mouth shut and assure him that becoming a hood ornament is not on my "to do" list, and agree to ride more to my right. The guy is only trying to do his job and keep things safe. I try to keep that promise for the rest of the trip.

It was actually a bad day as far as weather was concerned.

Wind blew at a steady 20 miles an hour and gusted up to 30 miles an hour, often as a head wind. The temperature was at least between 90 and 95 degrees; probably more like 100. Around 2:00 p.m. or so, I just couldn't do it (ride) anymore. I was dead tired, exhausted! I remembered my friend Joe asking about what I would do if I "hit the wall". Well, now I was finding out because baby, I was there!

I looked for shade. Ahead I could see a dirt road on my left. There was a stunted bush on the side of the dirt road, so I rode to it. Stumbling off the bike, I collapsed in the meager shade, laying down in the dirt. My eyes were half closed, and I just tried to relax and gain a little strength. I picked up a stone as a souvenir and drank some water. After half an hour the flies had really become annoying. How the hell those little suckers can bit you through your clothes is beyond me, but bite they do!

I got up and pushed on. Frankly, I was quite pleased with myself: I didn't give up. Not that I really could, after all I was all by myself. It wasn't as if I could go up to someone and say "I'd like to go home now."

Ten miles later I came to a rest stop. It had picnic tables but no water. Again, bushes provided the only shade. I sat there sipping water from one of the bottles I carried until ,again, the flies drove me away. I decided to use the flies as a type of clock: when they started showing up it was time for me to go.

An hour later I was climbing a hill, leaving the town of Last Chance. I had originally hoped to find a motel there, but a shut down ice cream stand was as close as it got. Lisa, the bicyclist from Great Britain, had warned I'd find nothing there. Just another hill to climb in the miserable heat. She was right.

All the hills kind of took me by surprise. I say "kind of" because on one of my workouts in Cleveland I'd met a guy who had a friend that rode across the states. The friend had told him that both eastern Colorado and Kansas were quite hilly. At the time I simply hoped that the guy had taken a different route than the one I was planning.

"Not!" Not what I'd expected: an easy downhill ride. Not what I expected: a tailwind. Not what I wanted: cool weather. But my expectations and wants gradually changed to reflect reality.

It was climb one sucker and at the summit, see another. You'd climb that one, thinking "surely this will be the top!" But it wasn't. Just hell after hell (sic). I'd have bet good money I was higher than when I was when I left Denver.

The only good thing about Last Chance is that it means you're only 20 miles from Anton and just ten miles from Lindon. In Lindon there was a house and next to that an abandoned store with a large low wooden awning. Under the awning was a table. I ducked under the awning: Its rafters were lower than my head. There were faded newspapers displayed in the store windows. They told the story of a women murdered here, and the trial of her killer. It was a memorial. She and her husband had owned the store.

I read the stories and lay on the table. I fell asleep.

Maybe a half hour later, a car woke me up. A guy got out, at first I thought he was going to go up to the house, but he came to me. He wanted to talk about my ride. Like Lisa, he was from Great Britain. He had developed a new type of pannier, it was of molded plastic, and he claimed rainproof. I thought it weird that here I was in the middle of the freaking desert, and this guy was showing me waterproof panniers.

I finally made it to Anton, about 50 miles short of my goal of Idalia.

Anton has a grocery store and small motel. The motel is for sale, if you're interested. There were no vacancy's, all the rooms were snatched up by the Harvesters. Harvesters are the people that harvest the (here, wheat) crop. They usually start in Texas and work their way north. I never knew that before this ride. The motel also had a bunch of RV sites, the Harvesters had those full too. But I suspect the motel is a pretty lonely place once the harvest is over.

As I sat outside of the grocery store eating a burrito and drinking pop, I talked with Pat. She, her son Joel, and husband John were harvesters. Pat drove a semi, John a combine. What a life! I don't envy it. During school Pat and Joel stayed home in Texas and John worked the fields by himself.

I camped at the motel. The owner, Sue, said it was no problem and I could camp for free. She told me to just knock on her door if I needed to use her bathroom. I thought that was very considerate of her.

Even though I was behind a pine tree I had to fight the wind to pitch the tent. It seemed as if it would never stop blowing, but after sunset it finally did. Sue's cat was very interested in my tent and kept coming by the entire night.

That pretty much sums it up. Tomorrow I'm trying to make it to St. Francis which is 70 miles.