I feel like there are so many stories that happen throughout a day, but by the time my tired old brain makes it to a post, many are lost. Today I will try to stir up the dregs of this morning...
I woke up late, and later than Stephanie, because we camped at somewhat of a party site last night. Drunk people playing loud music (not bad in terms of taste, but certainly in terms of timing) until 10pm, and then shouting and throwing sacks onto boards until 11pm. At one point I crawled out of my tent last night, dragged out the iPod, lay on the picnic table on our site, and stared at the starry sky. It was the clear type of wilderness sky that reminds you how much more universe there is shining at you than you usually think. That there are more stars in heaven and earth than is usually dreamt of in our philosophy, Horatio. It was a bugger of a thinker of a night, too. When it got too cold I retreated back to the tent and throughout the night kept sliding downhill, towards my feet and away from my pillow.
Fast forward to the morning. What happened? I don't know. When I went off-road to pee, though, my shoes got thoroughly stabbed by these insidious grass seed thingies that spread their pointy seed by imbedding themselves into the shoes-socks-and-skins of helpless cyclists like myself. This happens about every day for me. Often multiple times. Picture at the bottom.
Morning went smoothly. There was a nice descent at some point, and though the road was curvy I managed to get some nice speed in at times. Ideal for descents happened during the first week, on a well-maintained highway designed for cars to go 55mph on. Gravity and air resistance equilibrated at about 35mph for me, and there was such a wide shoulder, as well as the incredible views of where you would fly if you took a turn too sharply.
Oh, and now we come to the dark side of descents: the imperfections in the road, the gash that might trap my front wheel and send me flying, or the improperly banked turn that sends me (yes, I should have been more careful, and I must in the future, but for now: what hella bad engineering!) off onto the gravelly edge of the road or straight into oncoming lanes...
But for now I still grin like a mad man as I gain downward momentum, ruthlessly discarding the elevation I took hours to build. I engage enough to scan the road ahead of me and plan my turns for safety and maximum speed, leaning in and out of turns, and hoping my rack doesn't break again from the strain...
Speed is fun, but it is a relatively small part of the day. Most of it is slugging upward. Upward and onward, I tell myself. It's the journey, not the destination? What a hot, sweaty, burny journey. Oh, but how strong I am getting. Oh, but how strong I am! Go go go! Steady and slow. And such like that.
Also, one might think that eating the entire chimichanga before the big hill might be a good idea, but good lord it definitely wasn't.
We got to this lake, swam a little in it, hen dried in the sun.
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