Day 15 - July 1st

Eat. No. Eat. I can’t. Just eat it. I wont be able to keep it down though. You have to eat it or you’ll hit the wall. I don’t care, bring the wall on. Oh just shut up and eat it.

That was the conversation today between my mind and stomach. I knew I needed to eat due to the fact that I am burning through more than 5,000 calories a day. But eating was monstrously unappealing today, probably because the Nebraska frontier was a cycling crematorium today. Between the heat and my intake of mass amounts of fluids to stifle the process of turning my insides into parchment, I just could not stir up an appetite. Every bite I took in my task to consume those needed calories was a torturous compromise between knowing and feeling; I knew I needed it, but I just didn’t feel like consuming it. I like food, but even before this ride started I often found myself forcing the intake of food; I don’t always enjoy the repetitive motion of downing the various forms of energy our meals come in. There is nothing wrong with it, I just feel like it is often a chore versus a pleasure. And since this ride has begun, eating has gone from an occasional annoyance to outright anguish. But, this too is just another lesson of the road. Sometimes you are forced to ignore the pains in a tight thigh, sore back, irritated knee, or even your own signs of hunger, or lack there of; you just have to shut up and chew.

Today’s ride took us over 118 miles of Nebraskan topsoil. The roads were sketchy during portions of the day; road maintenance out here in no-mans land is done in sections of 10 to 30 foot blocks, and where one block ends and another begins there tends to be a crevice. Typically this crevice is filled with a tar like substance to make the transfer from one portion of the road to the next transparent. Unfortunately, the slabs of cement have a tendency to settle, or the tar to deteriorate, and you are left with a sizable crack between each block of road. This creates a very bumpy ride on a road bike; you and your bike are constantly being poured over a series of bumps that send a series of shocks crashing through your upper torso. Every few seconds my bike and I created another ‘thump’ and the pain of the road pulsated through my hands, wrists, forearms and into my weary shoulders. By the time mile 110 rolled around my left wrist was screaming in agony; pleading for some sort of relief from the grueling beast that highway 20 had become. But, unfortunately for my wrist, the only sanctuary in sight was mile marker 118; until then there was no real choice but to grin and bear it. Well the grinning part may be far fetched, but the bearing part was real enough.

One of the best Kodak moments of the day presented its self early in the ride; about mile 30. Rolling into Bob’s haven on wheels, our guru of support pointed out a site that both Gary and I had missed in our single focused goal of arriving at the slice of heaven that SUV has become. Behind us, standing guard over its vast territory of rolling hills, copses of trees, streams of silver, and the numerous animal denizens, stood an ancient ridge of bluffs. The sheared rock faces, hundreds of feet above its own foothills, were bitterly old, yet presented a feeling of youthfulness innocence to them. These pillars of granite like solidarity were immortalized by Mr. Loch when he captured them with his photographic eye. I believe he even posted a picture of the riders with these youthful ancients silhouetted proudly in the backdrop.

The biggest factor of the ride today was the heat; it soared to 90 degrees by 10:00 am and only managed to climb from there. I believe it topped out at a moisture destroying 95 degrees; not a good day to be in the saddle for 6+ hours. There were portions of the ride, when the ever present wind settled down, in which you could literally feel the heat pilfer your hard earned moisture and leave nothing behind but a continuous patch of salt flaking away on your skin. The heat was not content to come at us just from above either; you could also feel the heat radiating off the scalding road. Thankfully, we were off the bikes by 2:30 and settled into our climate controlled SUV. An ice cold beer has not tasted that good, or that well earned, in a very long time; yesterday perhaps.