114 miles, 6 miles short of what the route card said, in 5:4_ with 3,872ft of climbing and average of 19.7 (Tom) or 19.9 (Mike). Another of the "I can't believe how lucky we have been with the weather" kind of day, morning in low 70s and up to mid 80s by the time we arrived in Custer, blue skies the whole day. As one example, on Monday there was a very nasty hailstorm near Gillette that broke windows and dented cars, something we completely missed.
Before today's recap though a small addition for yesterday. After we left Sheridan through 20 miles of landscape as drawn by Dr Suess (humps, bumps, and lumps in a crazy configuration that made no sense whatsoever) and before our first antelope we massacred 'em by the hundreds. Grasshoppers that is. They were everywhere, invisible to us on the sand colored asphalt of Rt 14. They make a little crackle when the tires crush them, they ping off the spokes, and they slap into your chest or legs. But they are all over: hopper season is upon us and apparently it gets painful at times as a big bug and 20mph don't mix well.
Today. We started off after 7am and rode for an hour - 20 miles - and still we were along the remnants of Gillette's "The energy capital of the nation!" industrial footprint in the form of very long train yards. If you like mile-long trains of coal by the dozens, industrial plants with tall smokestacks belching white smoke, open pit mines, pumpjacks with its horse head nodding up and down or natural gas refining center then get to Gillette and head east. Tom is a fan (industry!), I am less so. When we finally got out of Gillette's long footprint, it was, well, boring. Just continuous pastures rolling a bit in all directions with short grass and sage and the very occasional cow. The two highlights were a brief glimpse of Devil's Tower to our north, it looked like a small blue thimble on the horizon, and the act of topping a small rise in the prarie, seeing the next 8 miles of road extend to another little bump, riding that distance, topping the next little rise, and repeating the exercise.
We had two rest stops and then lunch in Newcastle, all of this along Rt 16 so easy to find our way, and then it got more interesting. As Tom said it looked like the area west of Spokane with pine trees starting to pop up and then becoming predominant. Then we started into South Dakota and the Black Hills, which are very much hills with real ups and downs amid a burned out forest of dead pine trees. Tom and I parted at the last rest stop, 17 miles to go, with me racing Kurt (the Swiss rider) up and down the hills which is maybe not such a smart idea (Kurt won the time trial up the Bighorn) and Tom following shortly thereafter. We had held a 20mph average all day by bombing along the flat roads (24, 26mph), right up to the start of the Black Hills but there would be no more of that.
Now we're in Custer, short day tomorrow to Rapid City and we're off to new places. Dinner at the Cattleman's Steakhouse with Jerry\MN, Steady Bob, Walt, and Australian Jonathan. Very fun dinner full of ideas for future trips i.e. 4 month trips from Peru to southern tip of Argentina, riding in the Race Across America, but "first thing is the family has to go."
Attrition report: Greg (Vikki's husband) only had a week to ride so he left last Sunday; Bob on the Bike Friday (Vienna, Virginia) joined us in Powell, Montana; David Soloman (Oz) left us in Sheridan to go back and work; the tandem riders who we never really got to know are leaving after tomorrow (the husband also did the Elite tour earlier this year...); "Steady Bob" from Virginia is leaving tomorrow for a bike trip in Alaska; and Tom (Silicon Valley) is calling it quits having done the mountain riding he's excited about. Janae continues to ride\not ride based on how her knee feels, everyone else is still pumping along. Including some (like Tom) who just got back from a little extra ride out to see the Crazyhorse monument (me, I have a massage...)
And roadkill: people don't like skunks I think, 4 dead and 1 deer plus a couple squirrels here in the hills.
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