25 Miles today, Monday 6/29,2009. We decided to ride two short days instead of taking an entire day off, so this is a short day. We sleep in and have a big breakfast and leave late around 9:15a from the motel . We stop at a bike shop uptown for John to get his bike computer fixed and re calibrated. We ride the middletown road to Waitsburg and we find out why the song America has the waves of amber grain line in it. We ride for twenty or more miles with the only sight being wheat feilds puncuated by an occasional farmhouse and barn or by a cemetery in the middle of nowhere. Near Waitsburg there are long fields of peas as this is Green Giant Company territory. I get into Waitsburg ahead of the crew, I have not seen them since the first hill, and ride around this all American town. Very clean and both very old and new buildings on the small main street. The hardware and general store has everything from appliances to antique horse saddles . The owner tells us of other riders coming through in the past week and how good the weather is for us, it is usually over 100 but this week is in the cool 80's. I stop at the farm store which used to be the livery stable, then gas station, now propane and gas station , grain store and quick mart. I chat with Walt there for about a half hour waiting for the crew. He gives me a fairly detailed history of Waitsburg including current bike rides and the local politics. Then the crew comes in and we spend another half hour checking out the town. We ride another five miles up the road to the campground and meet Suz, we have the pick of sites and it is clean and neat and quiet. Looking forward to tomorrows ride of 75 miles to Hells gate campground in Lewiston. We all agree to leave early tomorrow to try to beat some of the heat on this longest day yet. I will ride my own pace to see how I hold up at this distance in the hills. Early to bed tonight after some backgammon and stories as well as more map checking.
Jim, Suzanne and Beau
No comments:
Post a Comment