Day 09 – June 25th

Keeping the rubber-side down, we headed out of Aberdeen, Idaho and made it a whopping 5 miles. I was having serious issues shifting, and my cyclometer wasn’t working. After getting the cyclometer operating, I attempted to tweak my cables and rear derailleur to improve the quality of my shifts. Apparently Brian has been rubbing off on me, as I managed to remedy it not in the least. I fought my gears the rest of the day; man would I be ecstatic (like a Christina getting a box of Peeps on Easter) when I got it into a bike shop. That was not to be our only maintenance issue of the day though; the support vehicle was also having problems. Around 38 miles in for the day, Larry took off to get the car looked at and Gary and I headed out solo. No worries, as Larry had provided us ample information to find our way to the hotel which was less than 30 miles away. After a quick lunch at Wendy’s (yeah I know, not the healthiest choice, but one can only eat so many turkey sandwiches before you need to mix it up a bit), the riders set out one direction and the support vehicle the other. Today was a planned ‘rest’ day; we were only doing 70 miles or so. We finished with about 67 miles logged; it’s a messed up situation, though, when a rest day is a metric century. We cruised into town around 1:00 pm and headed straight for a bike shop. An hour later both our bikes were tuned up, and they were shifting smooth as butter. I was pretty excited to have my performance machine back and listening to me again.

We then headed towards the hotel to drop off our bikes, take a shower, and catch a nap before Larry got there with the support car and supplies. Unfortunately, our plans didn’t plan out as quickly as we expected, something a lot more attractive caught our attention. Less than a block from the hotel we noticed a beautiful sign stating “Brewery”. I believe this was God’s way of saying 'take it easy for a while and enjoy a beer or two'. So I took the Big Guy’s advice and pulled in for some food and micro-brews; the summer-fest was heavenly.

It was quite nice getting into town early, and being able to get a rest in after a soul satisfying meal; I think we should try and make a pattern of this behavior. But alas, it will not last. Tomorrow we have a couple big climbs in store for us; we will be doing over 5,000 feet of climbing. The day after that is another day of climbing in which we will ascend 3,000 feet in about 17 miles. The summit for that day is 9,570 feet; this will be the highest elevation we battle our way up to on our sojourn for the East Coast. My knee didn’t do as well today as yesterday, but I think it’s just a minor setback. What it needs to be fully healed is probably a six pack of Shiner, a beach, and a novel. Yes that sounds just about right...