Day 06

One thing on the agenda, no matter how much we wanted to get on the road today was to go stand on the corner in Winslow AZ.  I stopped by on my way in yesterday for the obligatory photo.  Yes, standing on the corner in Winslow Arizona...such a fine sight to see...there was a girl my Lord, who was obviously bored, just standing there ignoring me.  Yeah, I know I'm not a song writer, but it was the best I could do in the situation.  It's amazing how this small town's tourism is pretty much based on a song sung by the Eagles.  But we are doing the tourist thing ourselves and taking the obligatory photos...I'd like to have a nickel for every photo that's been snapped here.  I'd be a rich man.

It was a bit cool when we rolled out this morning.  Even though it was 43 degrees, the sun made it feel much milder as everyone was wondering if they really needed to dress that warmly.  As it turned out, the temperatures were pretty mild but it turned out to be a blustery day!  We've never been out here that the wind wasn't blowing and sometimes really hard...today was a great wind day, but it has blown harder.  In the early morning, the riders had pretty much a calm wind as they departed Winslow...this or a light head wind is a pretty normal occurrence but as the afternoon heated up, the winds started to give us a pretty good boost.  The wind was blowing so hard I barely was able to grab this interstate warning sign as this wind gust whipped me eastward.  Luckily, my bike got caught in the fence and I was able to retrieve it.  When it's like this, I demonstrate the art of spitting off the front of the bike in a perfect tailwind...it's neat when you are going 30+ MPH and you can spit off the front of the bike and it doesn't come back and splat you in the face.  If we were going in the opposite direction, you probably couldn't even get the spit to come out!  Probably more info than you really wanted.  But it wasn't quite that good today as the winds only picked up to about 15-20 all afternoon...but we'll take it and it was probably one of the easiest 134 miles any of these riders have seen.  I'm sure if the wind had been in the opposite direction our attitude would have been much different. 

Our route today was really tame compared to the last couple of days.  Gone are the trees that surrounded us as we climbed up the mountains approaching Flagstaff.  Now we are in the most wide open area that you can imagine.  You can see hundreds of miles in all directions in most places.  But the biggest climbs today were only gentle rollers on the interstate that may rise 50-100 feet over a couple of miles and then drop back down the other side.  Today's terrain consisted of the most wide open, desolate terrain you could imagine.   As a matter of fact, if you look up desolate in Webster's Dictionary you'll find a picture of the road between Winslow and Gallup NM.  I know I said yesterday was about as wide open as you can get, but today was even more desolate.

Since we were on the interstate most of the day, we had another day of more than normal flats, but we didn't have nearly the record for a day (in '99 we had 135 in one day on the challenge).  My hands are pretty raw from all the tire changing today...I fixed about 7 and know that I didn't catch them all.  We've had to pump so much air into our tires today that it became hard to breathe near our route...no air left!

Everyone was having a good day today with the kicking tailwinds.  Jay commented that we had over 3000 feet of climbing today and over 134 miles, but it seemed like a rest day after the three hot days in the desert.  When we have such easy pedaling days it allows folks to relax a bit and make some interesting observations during the day.  Someone commented at the SAG that a bike ride was the only place he knew where both sexes stand around touching their butts in public and nobody seems to care.  Must be something about sitting on a hard seat for 8-10 hours a day. 

All but a couple got in by 6 today even though we lost an hour entering the Mountain time zone and our third state...New Mexico.  Tomorrow we'll have to get up early to tackle our longest day so far...137 into Albuquerque.  See you then.