We knew this would be a tough day but we didn't know it would be the wind chewing us up. Headwinds can make a flat road feel like a hill and a hill feel like a wall, and side winds can cause cramping in places that never cramp on a ride. Lean, lean!! At one point it felt like we were leaning 25 degrees to the right to keep from getting flattened. We figure the winds were 25 gusting to 35 or 40. That was before we hit the 8-mile climb up to an unnamed pass at 6410'. We decided to name it Mt. Davidson after Chris Davidson because it was "a bit of a climb." Then came a little descent and another climb to 6462' at Little Truckee Summit.
The reason we don't have a lot of photos is, the guy on the front of the bike was focused on this, which was attached to hi handlebars.
There is our elevation profile for the day. Start low; finish high and climb a bunch in between. When we got the C-store shown in the picture below, we were at mile 47+. We had just finished with the nasty side winds that threatened to blow us off the road. It was a welcome spot because it had FOOD. We shared a huge tuna salad sandwich and bag of chips. Plus I had a 30-ounce Coke/Diet Coke mix. And while we were figuring out what to eat, we went through a small bag of trail mix containing nuts, raisins, M&Ms, etc.
While we were riding, Kris used her iPhone to take some pics of the scenery.
We finished the day with Patrice and soon the others arrived. Well, 3 others. The rest had had enough of the winds, traffic, and miles and took the van in from about mile 50. John McManus will have a shot of the 6 finishers on his blog.
Tomorrow, we poke along down to South Lake Tahoe, our 9th day in a row on the bike. We're ready for a rest day the day after!
No comments:
Post a Comment