Day 10 - Hills, Cows, and Headwinds (Brandon)

 

After a great night around our first campfire of the trip, we were abruptly awoken at 6AM by raindrops coming down on us inside the tent. Due to the nice weather, and starry night sky we decided to leave the rain fly off the tent, and it proved to be a great idea, until it wasn’t. We only had 50 miles to ride today, but after our early natural alarm clock, we decided to get geared up and hit the road. We were pretty excited for real beds, clean clothes, and a day off in Eureka that awaited us after today, so we were motivated!

About 10 miles in, I got a flat tire, the first in a few days, but I wasn’t able to identify the cause, so I put a new tube on and kept going. The road today was narrow, without shoulders for large sections, so we got to share the road with cars often, and there were a few serious hills for the first half of the ride. By the time we made it to a lunch stop in Trinidad around noon we were famished! A clif bar for breakfast was not enough food for the miles and hills we had done. I had another flat about a mile from our lunch spot, caused by the tiny piece of glass that caused the flat earlier in the day that I couldn’t find. For those counting, that’s four flats for me, and zero for Christi.😩

Photo courtesy of Christi. 🙄

I had an amazing double bacon avocado burger and an ice cream cone at our lunch spot, the Lighthouse Grill, it was incredible, and hit the spot. The last 20 miles into Eureka from here looked really flat, and it was mostly on trails and country roads. Once we hit the country road and started talking to the cows, I played some John Denver on my phone for a little atmosphere. The map wasn’t wrong, this was a relatively flat stretch on quiet trails and roads… but the map didn’t have wind conditions. 😳

Two 1/3Lb patties... it was a lot of burger

Homemade style Goji Berry... incredible.

We were headed directly into a strong South wind for the rest of the ride. Our legs were fried by the time we made it into town, luckily tomorrow is a rest day. Once we got into the hotel and I took a shower we walked over to Target for some supplies and a new set of clothes for Christi, since everything she had was really stinky and she needed something to wear while we did laundry. We had pizza delivered to the hotel while we did laundry, and then called it a night, we were really tired. 😵

Photo courtesy of Christy... clearly.

-Cheers!