DAILY BLOG

Before today’s stage, let me give you a video clip from Colorado. Our videos are running behind the normal blog by a couple of days.

On to today…

Praise God for tailwinds—or in our case today, a partial tailwind. We left Clayton, NM this morning had approximately 100 miles to get to Guymon, OK. Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought we could have covered those 100 miles in a little over 4 hours!

Not much scenery, except for a lot of farmlands

Rich and Jared pushing hard with some help from the wind (ok, a lot of help!)

When we started out the morning, we were trying to decide whether to head towards Guymon through a brief part of Texas or simply head straight into Oklahoma. Once we saw the south/southwest direction of a 25-30mph wind, we decided that the Oklahoma route would give us the best chance at a tailwind. That would prove to be a good decision, as we covered the first 80 miles in just over 3 hours. The first 40 miles of the day, we’d have that wind right behind us and the last 60, we had it 1/2 way tail and 1/2 cross—but enough behind us to help!

When you have a tailwind, I guess some people might have a tendency to let up and take it easy, knowing that they don’t have to work as hard to cover the same distance. Jared and I reacted the exact opposite. We were working like mad out there, pushing to get the miles done as soon as possible. I guess that I ended spending about 85% of the day in my lowest (hardest) gear.

The terrain was nearly all flat as we biked through Great Plains farmlands. The road into Boise City, Oklahoma was awesome—some of the best blacktop we’ve had since California. But once we were east of Boise City, the blacktop had very annoying and painful bumps every 20 feet. Literally every 20 feet for 40 miles. Maybe that’s why we rode so hard today—so we could get off of our saddles as soon as possible!

Up until yesterday, we had had no flat tires for the entire trip. Yesterday was our first, and today we had 2! Jared and Justy both had flats this afternoon. Since I only had one CO2 air canister (good for one tire only), we were able to find a Wal-Mart in Guymon and find a temporary pump solution until we can get to a real bike store in Oklahoma City.

Finishing the day in the Wal-Mart parking lot

Over the entire trip, the boys have been very supportive of each other. When Jared was the first up Mt. Evans, his bros were the first to congratulate him. When Jordan rode 47 miles yesterday and finished the ride with Jared/I, his bros were really excited for him. When Justy headed out to work through some pain he’s been having while riding, his bros encouraged him to go out and do his best.

Tomorrow, we head to Woodward, OK, the second stop in our cross-Oklahoma section of the trip. We are particularly excited about that because we have some really close friends who live in Houston that are meeting us there!