As with any large group, ours has many different types of personalities, so a description of what my typical day is like may not suffice for the others, but since the others are more diligent bloggers than I am, you probably know all about their days.
I usually get up between 4 and 530, depending on how crazy I feel like getting and how long the mileage is for the day. Breakfast and breaking down the campsite are the first things on the docket. My tent is pretty easy to take down, but for those of you who know me well, you know that I am a slow mover in the morning. I have to plan a little extra time into each morning so that I can make sure that I can screw around and stare blankly into space for a little while before I have to start pedaling.
First breakfast (yes, I think like a Hobbit now) is usually something fairly small. I have trouble eating anything substantial right at the beginning. Once that business is out of the way, I usually group up with my compatriots and start out on the road.
When you are beating your body up day after day, and sleeping on the ground as well, it is not easy to start your day eating up the pavement. The pace is just a little slower than walking for a little while, but who cares, you have all day long to pedal anywhere from 50 – 100 miles, depending on the day. The best is when there is a massive hill right outside of the town where we slept, so your real alarm clock is the 10% grade waiting outside of your tent. I have discovered, thus far on the trip, that all towns where we end wither have a hill into them, out of them, or better yet, both. Who needs coffee with a 10 min ass-busting climb at 6 am. Well, I do, but I rarely get it since I am a camp-stove idiot and one of the laziest people that you ever met.
Our days are defined by the water support stops that happen every 20 – 30 miles on the route. One must be relatively fast to catch the van to get water, but if you are lagging behind, there is usually always a way to find water. For example, Tara and I were climbing in the Ozarks the other day, and Tara was resourceful enough to find a spigot in back of a fine dining establishment (I mean it too, the place even had a tiger cage associated with it. What it was doing in the middle of nowhere in Missouri, I will never know, but there it was. The tiger was probably asking itself the same question I suppose.)
If we are lucky, the first stop will be at a place where we can find a greasy breakfast (second breakfast to you Tolkien fans). Even if you aren’t lucky enough to have one at the stop, there is usually one on the route, and all it takes is the will to skip one of the stops, or to be hopelessly behind the lead group (which I almost always am).
The other stops are usually timed for lunch and second lunch, but the afternoon ones are key for water in these humid and hot days. Along the way, you are free to take whatever pace you see fit, so if you are feeling like taking 1000 pictures, so be it. If you feel like taking a nap under a tree (a resource that is dwindling as we approach the prairie), so be it. Today, we stopped at a river to swim and cool off, take a little nap, and attack the second half of the day with vim and vigor.
Sometimes we ride alone, and often in loose groups. The times alone are pensive and introspective for me. I try and look up and around me as much as possible. I want to drink in every mile, see the places that we ride through for what they are. Often it isn’t hard to find the beauty, other times you have to dig a little deep to see it.
Sometimes, when I’m feeling frisky, I will really go after the mileage between rest stops. This is called “crushing it,” or so I am told by the kids on the tour. Kids these days. Well, in relation to the others on the trip, I have decided that even when I feel like I am crushing it, I am really just squishing it. Whatever, I am having fun, riding standing up and feeling like I am flying.
Eventually, I will pull into camp, usually much later than at least half of the group, but it isn’t a race, and that really isn’t my style anyway. I will be late to my own funeral – though THAT will not be my fault.
The search for more food begins. I have totally given up on the pretense that I would cook most of my own food. I have to admit, although I like to cook, I can think of nothing I would like to do less than cook after a long ride. Local diners, restaurants, and gas station food have done me well, and have fed my laziness as well.
Then I will move on to setting up my home – my tent that is. After a little socializing, and avoiding blogging (as I am sure you can tell), I find my way to the tent by 11. Because I am both an early riser and a later bedder, I seem to be under the radar in terms of annoying either of these groups. It’s amazing how much less sleep I need on this trip as compared to at home. I am running on a max of 7 hours of sleep nowadays, whereas at home I am running on 9 or 10. I suppose you can tell which of these I would rather be doing. Well, the sun is down, and that means that it’s bed time. I love living by natural light – it just seems right.
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