Day Eight

This is how you get out of Winnemucca.

Just another beautiful day on the road.

Beverly Hills Carolyn shows how we all felt today.

Done riding for the day relaxing with Shawn and Kiwi Rick.

Honest to gawd real live Hurley from Southie AND he was starting forward at Holy Cross!

You don’t need a weatherman to tell which way the wind is blowing.

This was supposed to be an easy day (50+ miles with minimum climbing) so I kept waiting for something to screw it up but it never happened.

Hard to believe that you can have such a nice ride on I-80 particularly after the past few days but today was clear and bright with minimal traffic and clean shoulders. We had a couple beautiful sweeping long downhills and only one 3 mile climb to Golconda Summit (5159 feet). On flat sections where yesterday we would have worked hard to maintain 9-11 mph we were literally dancing at 16-18 mph and towards the middle of the morning we were easily pushing 20-22 with a gentle TAILwind!

We arrived at our destination, Battle Mountain, at 11am so we immediately went in search of ice cream and found a neat little coffee shop that also had soft serve, smoothies, and baked goods. About 3000 people live here and mining is the major employer. Not too many strangers in spandex come through so EVERYONE checks us out.

The only bad part about today is that Robb couldn’t experience it because he had to head home. His father-in-law is failing badly so he’s gone to be with his family. He had a really hard time “getting out of Winnemucca”. There are no rental cars, no airport, no bus station, no train station. If you want to gamble come on down but if you want to leave…well that’s really not possible. Amazingly he found that the Greyhound bus (yeah they’re still around) stops daily at 6:15am if they see anyone standing at the Chevron Station who looks like they might need a ride. A couple hours later he should have been in Reno with a flight to Salt Lake and then to Boston.

Hopefully he’s having as smooth a trip as we had today and can rejoin us as soon as possible. His bike and luggage are still here and everyone wishes him well and hopes he can return soon.

Today’s ratings:

Scenery: 5

Road conditions: 9

Grunt factor: 9.5

Sorry I’m late with this posting but internet service at Americas "Best Value" Inn is non-existent.