July 14, 2006
Day 65: Madison River to Twin Bridges
| Heart | 1 | Comment | 0 | Link |
Talked to a real cowboy at breakfast for a while, chowed down on a bunch of food, picked up some supplies, heard that the unicycle was ahead of me by a couple of days, and generally procrastinated about heading up the long Virginia City hill. It's not that I hate hills. I really don't. I'm just soooo sloooow going up them. Like 2 and a half hours up this one. The view was gorgeous, it was just one of those hills where you could always still see how far you had to go and you never seemed to be getting anywhere.
| Heart | 1 | Comment | 0 | Link |
| Heart | 0 | Comment | 0 | Link |
But eventually the downhill side came. I didn't hit as high of a speed as I wanted because my gentle tailwind of the morning had turned into a brisk headwind. Pooh. I know a lot of people hit their top speed of the trip on this hill : ( I wasn't smitten with Virginia City like some people have been, but I did get some good ice cream and lots to drink to battle the heat. I stopped at every town along the way to Twin Bridges for more cold drinks and wasn't in a big hurry. Twin Bridges didn't look like it had much, and I planned to camp at a fairgrounds, so my time was better spent in the shade at convenience stores.
The downhill into Twin Bridges was a great, long, slow slope that helped the final miles of the day fly by. I got directions to the fairgrounds from the sheriff but got distracted by a sign for the storefront library. In such a small town, I figured it would be closing very soon, but they were open for a couple of hours and let me have a bunch of time, which I really needed. EVEN BETTER, one of the librarians started asking me all sorts of questions about my trip and where I was staying and everything. She was really keyed in on the fact that if I stayed at the fairgrounds I wouldn't get a shower. 'But don't you want a shower?' Well, yes, a shower would be nice, but that doesn't happen every night on a trip like this.
Yvonne took less than a second to offer me the use of her mother's shower just a few blocks away. So off I went in search of a white house on an unnamed street (town too small for street names apparently) where all the older ladies of the neighborhood were chatting (they said it wasn't gossip because everything they talked about was true!). After a few protestations on my part, a shower turned into laundry and then dinner. Yvonne was mortified that her mother had asked me to do the cooking since she didn't feel like it, but I didn't mind. It was one of those box dinners with directions. I can do directions! Watermellon, bread, potato salad and seconds for everything!
While we were waiting for dinner and my laundry, the ladies asked me all sorts of questions about my trip and traveling alone. They were fascinated with my self-defense course and wanted me to demonstrate some moves for them. The whole situation was a bit strange-older ladies in a tiny town getting self-defense training from me-but we all had fun.
| Heart | 0 | Comment | 0 | Link |
I had been kind of worried about spending all the time there since I didn't have camp set up yet and hadn't even found the fairgrounds, but Mary's neighbor Lucille offered me her extra bedroom. I was full, I was clean, I had clean clothes, and I was getting to sleep in a bed. WooHoo! I love when I get adopted!
Lucille shared information about her children and late husband before ushering me off to my warm, clean bed.
Today's ride: 79 miles (127 km)
Total: 3,297 miles (5,306 km)
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 3 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 0 |