Today's Report: 

Yawn...really enjoyed this morning...lazy get up and a short ride to breakfast at the Shilling House.  Last night they catered a great dinner for us, but this morning we rode to their establishment at 8:00...8:00!!!  That's obscene.  But we endured the obscenity since it's probably the last time we'll be able to sleep in for quite awhile.  The Shilling House is a small house in the middle of a residential area and when you see it you wouldn't believe it could hold more than a handful of people at a time, but when you go inside, it's amazing how large it is and how many it will seat.  Last year we got our entire ride of 75 people inside at the same time.  This years 50 and some was no problem at all.  We thought dinner was great, but breakfast was phenomenal.  Since they are in a residential area and are technically a catering business they have to have special permits.  The entire bottom level was a bed and breakfast type restaurant complete with old photos of past residents, an old organ, and soft piped in 1940's Glen Miller type background music...appropriately enough for us one of the songs was "In The Mood."

The atmosphere was well above the standard for a group of cyclists but everyone enjoyed the pampering they received this morning...just hope we don't spoil them.  Everyone seemed not to be in a hurry with the short mileage and especially since we were in such a nice place.  We didn't load until 10:30 and the last rider didn't leave the motel until around 11:00.  Rooms in Idaho Falls weren't released to us until 3:00 anyway.  We told folks today would be a good day to take something to change into when they got in since we couldn't unload luggage until near room release time.  To bide the time after breakfast I offered a flat tire clinic in the shade of the motel.  During the clinic, we talked about the importance of forensics while fixing a flat as most flats out here are results of poor fixing of a previous flat.

When we pulled out, the sun was shining and the winds were light!!!  We've lost the nice tailwinds we've been having for the last few days, but we got the next best thing...not much of a breeze at all.  What we did have was in our face which kept us a little cooler than we could have been with the heat setting in before we arrived at the motel.  It was nice to have a good active rest day to prepare for tomorrow.  It was basically a non-eventful day...just like I like it.  Everyone got in fairly early in spite of the late departure.  I wish we had more days like this.  It even gives us staff a little time to catch a breath. 

Our route started out in the country and we pretty much stayed in rural areas most of the day.  The route followed the Snake River basin where everything is pretty green, but it takes plenty of irrigation to keep it that way.  There's not many areas around this section of the ride that isn't covered by giant sprinkler systems pulsating all day while cycling itself around the field.  These systems are motorized and create large ruts through the crops where they trek back and forth across the landscape.  I'd like to know how much it costs to run one of those contraptions...they sure do put out a lot of water during the day.

We did have some interesting sights today, at one point about 8 miles from the motel, I found a few riders admiring a mechanical contraption in a small corral.  They couldn't figure out what it was, but it looked like a steer and it didn't seem to require much hay.  I explained how the cowboys in this area use this mechanical steer for roping practice.  It's on a sled, and they pull it behind a horse as other cowboys try to lasso it.  In another corral, they had a more updated version with a battery pack that makes the rear legs fly up so they can use it for team roping practice.  Team roping requires one cowboy to lasso the head and the other cowboy to lasso the rear legs.  Now this is quite technical and considered quality entertainment to people out west...and for us greenhorns who've never seen it.  Seems to me some of the early cowboys had too much time on their hands to come up with this form of entertainment.  But this mechanical steer saves wear and tear on the real steers who most times have better things to do than run around the corral and be a target for roping practice.  Now they even have another one that a person can drive That's got to be the epitome of progress...now they have eliminated the pull horse.  If they can figure out how to eliminate the roping part it would be a banner day for the steers they usually use for practice.  They are really glad to see the new "roping dummy" in the corral.  The pen also included a chute for bull dogging practice, but from the looks of all the baseball size rocks that were lying around the arena, it could be a pretty bruising sport.  The cows probably don't like falling on them either.

Farther down the road we came upon a cool tree house in a tall cottonwood tree (right) owned by Garth and Patsy Harker.  They live so close to the Snake River that if they stumbled getting their mail, they might just fall in.  A couple years ago I spent several minutes taking pictures of the tree house from the ground, but after a short discussion with Ms Harker, she agreed to let me climb the stairs and take some pictures from the top.  As I was climbing to the upper level, I wasn't sure if I was overly thrilled she let me climb up there as I'm a little shy around this type of heights.  I can get on top of our vans in a strong wind and handle bikes with ease, but I was a little nervous up there 40 feet off the ground in a cottonwood tree!  I think they were flattered that all the cyclists were stopping to take pictures and that I was getting photos from the top.  She wanted to come on the ride as a support person...we meet some of the nicest people on these rides.  They weren't home this year so I left a card with a note in their door to let them know that we'd been through.

That completes another day on the road...and our last really easy day.  Tomorrow we ride to Jackson...it will be a tough day with our steepest climb on the trip...no late breakfast tomorrow.  Hopefully everyone will get a good rest this afternoon and be ready for a good challenge tomorrow.  I think several are worried about the climbs tomorrow, but as ride leader, I'm more worried about the descents.  Tune in and see how we do.  See you then.

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