Day 22: 115 miles, Longest Day of the Summer

Well Jay told us it was going to be 125 miles but ended up only being 115, I was just fine with that! It was a day full of hills, head wind, and distance. The day started great with my pace line being very upbeat and talkative. It seemed like the first week of the trip when we were in Washington everyone was always talking while riding and getting to know each other; however, recently there has not been much conversation because everyone knows about each other which made today great because we talked the entire first 60 miles of the ride. Holding conversation really makes the ride go faster and days like today are perfect for it. Once we hit about lunch time the head wind really started picking up making it harder to talk. As the conversations died down the ride started getting tougher. At about mile 80 Matt, one of the guys in my pace line, was really starting to struggle. I headed to the back of the pace line to encourage him up the hills. Him and I were a little ways from the rest of the pace line and I started talking to him to get his mind off the ride. His responses were short and sometimes he wouldn’t even say anything back. I figured he was really trying to concentrate and wasn’t in the mood to talk. At the next crew stop one of the crew guys was talking with Matt and noticed he was dehydrated. After taking a look at the color of his face and eyes I realized how dehydrated he was. We advised him to rack and sit in the van to get hydrated and cool off. It was good he did because talking to him after the ride he didn’t even remember me saying things to him when he was struggling before the crew stop; something Ill look out for with other riders and myself on these upcoming hot days. About mile 100 we just about ran into some T-storms. The crew was thinking about racking the whole team but after seeing the lightning storm pass quickly they determined it was safe for us to ride. Those last 15 miles were tough but I finished them, later realizing I had a slow leak in my front tire leaving me 50 PSI short of a fully pumped tire. All who finished felt very accomplished for the day and were ready to go to bed immediately.
Once again the local Cattle Women sponsored a wonderful dinner of tender beef, fruit salad, salad, bread, and home backed desserts. I had two huge plates full and was pleasantly satisfied after leaving their ranch where we ate. We stayed the night in the local middle school and all popped in a movie, most everyone had fallen asleep by 9:30. Tonight was it was actually really important to get to bed early because we had an extra early wake-up the next morning. Last night one of the cyclists missed curfew buy 17 minutes. One of the punishments for missing curfew is that he whole team has to wake up 30 minutes earlier than normal plus the amount of time they were late. Tomorrow we are scheduled for a 5 AM wake up which is now moved back to 4:13 AM. The reason everyone suffers is because we are a team and everyone is supposed to keep others accountable. This guy will not be able to ride tomorrow for being late and also the whole team has to get up early. I think it’s a pretty fair rule and if anything will remind everyone not to be late for curfew for the rest of the trip.