New Record - Longest Day

 

To me, this cow looks scared - as I was saying earlier - it often gets shot at.
We camped in an awesome spot by the side of the road.

Day 56 - Side of the Road to Middlegate Station, NV - 13 waves, 3 burgers, 112 miles - Totals 114 waves, 120 burgers, 5658kms LONGEST DAY!

I got up early because the sun was up, and getting up was the quickest way off the really cold ground - nights in Nevada are cold, however warm the day is. Alex did not quite take this approach and stayed snug in his sleeping for quite a while longer, until he needed to go to the loo so badly that he had to get up. I call this a lie-in, but still, we were both up by 6.30. Alex did quite a funny dance looking for a loo spot and ended up having to duck under a fence to find suitable cover.

We left by 7.40, after a relaxing breakfast - eating our few remaining provisions - I had bread and honey, a couple of pop-tarts and a cob of caramel popcorn! These are some of the cheap things that have been our staples when calories are needed (always - the number of pop-tarts must be almost more than the number of burgers). We cruised the first 2 hours at 25kph, until we met a couple of seasoned tourer's from San Francisco heading across country. We chatted to this husband and wife team for quite a while and they gave us a bunch of tips about which places to go for the rest of our trip. She has managed to get herself on our all-time worst guesses board - up there with me being from Belgium and Alex being 35, by guessing we were both 30! Well done wherever you are, and good luck with the rest of your trip.

This was a long chat, and soon after we met another cyclist who confirmed our hypothesis that while most of the people who cycle long-distances are in fact normal and nice, 3 in 10 are just really odd. "USA guy" as we have christened him - was definitely out there: the first 2 minutes of meeting him, he said nothing but USA - and we worked out after some time that he was making a reference to the draw with England in the World Cup. I don't know where he was going.
We pushed on up a steep hill and then over the top of a couple of big hills - our last real ones in Nevada, getting to Austin at 1.30. We had an expensive but nice burger for lunch, and then posted some posters from Bryce Canyon back to New York - to stop them getting wet along the rest of the way (they barely survived the attack of the sprinklers).

The last 60 miles we had to do fast - it was 60 miles to get food, and although we could have stopped and camped anywhere - we wanted supper, so we kept going. The first bit was slow going, a long long hill, and then another, meant we had 45 miles to do in 3 hours of light. We managed, but only just - getting in to Middlegate station at 20 to 9 after 112 miles - it was dark enough that we missed seeing the Shoe Tree - a local landmark right by the road.

We had great burgers and beer, and then splashed out $5 for the "shack"; a bunkhouse that sheltered us from the wind and the cold - too much camping recently and we had earned it after 212 miles in the last two days. We also get beds! A luxury - even if my feet are about a foot off the end.