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The theme of the day is: "I COULD DO THIS ALL DAY"
Today's scheduled to be 73 miles. Before the day is done
we'll need to finish a really steep climb out of Virginia City, MT.
They say that it's a 7% grade for 4 miles.
I left breakfast by 7AM and was moving at a pretty good
rate, by 9AM I was at the 30 mile mark. When I'm back in the office
I'm usually at my desk at 9AM and today I already had done 30 miles... what
a kick!!
The picnic stop was in the town of Sheridan at the 38 mile
mark. I arrived by 9:45. Wow that's what you call an early
breakfast.
Following the picnic stop, I fell in with a group of guys in
a pace line. They were going at a pretty good rate, so I decided to
join the line. In a pace line, generally the guy leading it will stay
in front for about a mile, then fall back and the second guy than becomes
the leader for another mile. Generally the speed is kept fairly fast
but constant. In this case, myself included, it seemed that with each
new leader, the speed increased slightly (perhaps a mile and hour).
Well since there were about six of us, it only took a couple of rotations
until we were going in the mid 20's and we were starting to climb up to Nevada
City to boot! Well I eventually dropped out, too pooped to keep up the pace. Within
a couple of miles, I pulled into Nevada City. It was noon by now and
getting pretty hot. I spent an hour or so walking thru the old ghost town
that has actually been pasted together from several other towns. The
highlight of the town is the two level outhouse, really! Well
one more mile up the road was Virginia City. Where Nevada City was a ghost
town, Virginia City ( http://www.westyellowstonenet.com/attractions/virginia_city.htm
) was a tourist trap, errr tourist attractions with stores, saloons
and stage coach rides. I join a bunch of other riders in at a soda
fountain and had a root beer float. As we left Virginia City
the climb began. At 7%, this was the steepest incline so far in the ride. It
wasn't easy, but I figured that if I had to, I could stop at the 1/2 mile
mark. By the 1/2 mark, I was ready to stop, but then I saw someone else at
that point and I figured that I must be a better rider than her, so I
figured that I would go to the one mile mark. At
the one mile mark, I wasn't too pooped and so kept climbing slowly up the
hill. I realized that I could make it the remaining three miles with
out stopping. At that time, I started to talk back to the mountain. I
started to mutter, then a bit louder.... "is that all you've got?"
"is that all you got" "I could this all day" I could do
this all day". As I spoke the I was picking up some speed and
slowly started to pass other rides. They all thought I was crazy as I
was shouting to them "I COULD DO THIS ALL DAY". By the time I was
at the top, I was really moving pretty fast. Before the descent
to Ennis, we stopped at the top and took a bunch of photos. The drop down to
Ennis was so steep had to stop a couple of times just to let the bikes brakes
cool down. Then it was down to town were we pulled into a soda
fountain and had more floats and then into school to put up the tents, take
a shower and have dinner.
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