Day Seven

Breakfast at the Cowpoke

Best sign of the trip so far

Giant sequoia in front of PJ's

Great scenery today

Entering Winnemucca

I finish my 74 mile Valley Tour #1 again!

Blowin’ in the wind.

When I would tell people about this trip invariably they’d make some comment about getting help from the prevailing westerly winds. Common practice has found that, unless you’re riding at 30,000 ft. it really doesn’t matter which direction you’re riding because the head vs. tail wind will average out at the surface. I hope that’s true because we just had the second day in a row with ferocious headwinds. We’re due!

My virtual riders today were everyone who participated in Alternatives’ Valley Friendship Tour. Robb and I have ridden in the tour for years and this year we couldn’t physically be there but all our financial supporters nicely wrote checks anyway so we were able to help the cause while riding 72 miles in Nevada. We even had a live radio interview from the Sturgeon Casino at 7:15 this morning so we had a chance to shout out to everyone on the plaza at the Whitin Mill. For more information on Alternatives, The Whitin Mill, and Valley Friendship Tour go to http://www.alternativesnet.org/ I understand the rain held off until the afternoon so I hope everyone had a great time and raised a lot of money.

Because of the radio interview we left Lovelock behind everyone into the same wind we battled all day yesterday. It was absurd with 7mph forward motion and I thought I’d just bag it at the first SAG stop (25 miles). We overtook some of the slower riders before long and found a steady pace. I had my special wind-eating sox on and, amazingly, before long we noticed that the wind was less of a factor. It was still a pain but at least a manageable one. Those sox really work!

We picked-up some stragglers including loveable 74 year old Larry Johnson from Alliance, OH who’s an inspiration to us all. We ended up riding in with Larry and Joy. Still a much longer day than normal due to the wind but compared to yesterday it was a breeze.

Robb found me an ice cream store a short walk from the motel. Winnemucca is an interesting place that is clearly higher on the food chain than Lovelock but appears to have cast its lot with the casino solution and is now barely holding on because there are just too many places to gamble in society today and not enough gambling dollars to support it.

We should probably rate the food daily because today would have been off the charts with a fabulous home cooked breakfast at the Cowpoke Café and finger-lickin’ ribs at the Flyin’ BBQ. While some meals are better than others there is no way you can go hungry on this trip. Clearly the ABB crew puts a lot of thought into keeping us fueled.

Today’s ratings:

Scenery: 7

Road Conditions: 7 (higher except for wind)

Grunt factor: 5