Day 15: Our Day with the Acrididae Family

Day 15: 148 miles, 2,800ft of climbing in something under 10 hours. Tom did it faster, the last 20 miles he took off to finish strong, I limped in with Jerry\MN riding next to me to make sure I was able to keep riding, pretty Cactus was I. It was a lot of big and flat ground with the very interesting Badlands National Park exactly in the middle of it. We had lunch there, plus 2 breaks before and 2 after due to the heat. Temperature was probably 95 degrees but it was over 100 on people's thermometers in terms of skin temp. Hot and dry. And after a calm morning we had a strong wind from the south nailing us as we headed due east. Doesn't sound as bad as it was because it wasn't a headwind, but it was howling and riding sideways to it still slows you down. The up and down of the last 40 miles of the trip became incredibly tough, the descents were very slow due to the wind and then it was just climb after climb. Too bad, the roads were awesome, a lot of new asphalt all the way to and through the park, and then very quiet frontage roads thereafter.

So a slog for 10 total hours in the sun, lots of tired faces tonight around the motel. Interesting things today were the snake that coiled in front of us and made our group of 4 scatter, you've never seen people move so fast. And there were the grasshoppers (Acrididae family). According to USDA there is a 25 year high in the grasshopper count - maybe the wet spring. They are everywhere, everywhere, twice as many as usual. It was like riding through a great big popcorn machine, they jump up, they get velocity, they smack you all over. The scary ones were the ones that were flying towards you and so the 30mph smack was noticable. Frequently they bounced off or into the spokes (PING!), sometimes the cassettes (people had to clean out their gearing of grasshopper guts). Tom was feeling persecuted because he thought he got hit more than anyone else (Jerry, Tom, and I did all the ride from lunch, joined later by Karl), but really we all got pinged, Tom just dislikes insects the most. So the sounds of the second half of the ride were squish, squish, PING! (off the spokes), squish, OW that hurts! (Tom), squish, squish, etc.

We lost another hour on arrival so feeling rushed tonight to be organized. Dinner at Sands restaurant, one of two here, with Bob (he of the 5 Bike Fridays).

Roadkill report was 3 deer, and antelope and a raccoon. And 10,000 grasshoppers.

Good news is that we are 15 days into our journey...with 15 to go. Half way in term of days and just 90 miles or so of being half way across the U.S. in terms of miles. No rain so far and winds mostly favorable. We're hoping for more of the same!

Note:  Article on us in the major Estonian newspaper did publish in print and is available for viewing at www.postimees.ee/?id=290624