Friday, May 8, 2009

day22 127mi 7:32 16 mi N of cold spr. station

Woke up early in dayton and had a huge tailwind. I was flying. I had the wind at my back and ripped off 50 miles before 11:00. I saw frank on the side of the road and he was changing a flat. He said that shawne made it to fallon the day before. I don't know if I talked about these guys yet but frank is 60+ and shawne is 41. Shawne is doing the ride for the american lung association and is raising money because he has had one of his lungs spontaneously deflate. He is a baller.
I stopped and ate at roundtable pizza and ate pizza and breadsticks for lunch. I was kind of running out of water because there is nothing for 30 miles where I stopped for lunch. I saw a windmill with a cistern below it that a pipe was pouring water into and I pulled over took a picture and climbed up on top of it to fillup a couple of bottles. A little later on I stopped in middlegate and had a burger and fries that I couldn't finish and a beer. All the patrons in there were watching trivial pursuit on t.v. and I talked to some old guy who used to ride out by the grand canyon on a 15 speed a long time ago. Bought some more water there and then headed off for cold creek springs. I rooled up to cold spring station which according to the map had camping, showers and restrooms. I turned in and didn't see much. A jeep pulled up and the driver said the owner was his brother and to knock on his door. I rolled my bike over to a fence and leaned it against it and knocked on the door. A man answered and told me that the restaurant/showers/restrooms had burned down. I told him that was fine and I just needed someplace to camp. He said to find any grassy spot and refused to take any money for it. His brother , from the jeep, came over and talked to me about my trip for a couple minutes and then headed off to get some dinner or something.I hadn't eat dinner yet because I was still full from the food I had eaten earlier and wasn't very hungry. I was sitting down and just about to write in my journal when My stomach started rumbling. Iwalked back to the house and asked the guy if I could use his restroom very politely. He blew up, screamed no a bunch of times and told me to camp somewhere else. I stood there shocked for a second and then hurriedly packed up my stuff. I was kind of mad. I packed up and decided to just ride as far as the light would let me because it was cooler now and the next place to get anything was 45 miles away in austin. I Put my flashing red light in my pocket and turned around every so often to scan for traffic behind me. I rode with some water in my mouth and just breathed through my nose, so I wouldn't be taking sips all the time to relieve my dry throat. I rode hard and finally saw a chain installation pulloff at the side of the road as it was getting dark. I rode 16 miles in 55 minutes with that wonderful tailwind. What a long day in the saddle. I pulled off the blacktop about 20 yards and set up my tent. A semi pulled in as I was reading, i am the messenger which I finished, but didn't bother me at all.

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