Day 6 - Mountain Home to Burley

If yesterday was a mentally tiring day, today I physically took a beating.

140 miles into a headwind for 8 hours. Ugh. This was the day to try and find my inner strength. Apart from the headwinds, we also had to deal with a crappy chip seal road surface.

Towards the end, I was riding with Ann and the Hofstra's (father and son from Michigan). We were echeloning because of the wind. After I pulled off, I found myself hugging the gutter trying to get into the draft. It made me feel like I was racing the old 'Piece of Cake' road race down near Albany, albeit at a slower pace.

Just after that, as we are riding up one of the countless short climbs on chipseal, I looked over at one of the many portable irrigation systems watering a field on my left. At the end of the pipe, there was a big smiley face and the motto "Have a nice day". If I'd had the energy, I would have gotten off my bike and well.... you can guess what I wanted to do..

It wasn't all bad today. I started off about 10 minutes after the last other rider today and finished with the fast group. There were some poor b***ards who ended up riding for an hour longer than me. Ouch.

We also managed to get the whole group to stop off at the ice cream shop in Buhl (Trout Capital of the USA apparently) where they served potato ice cream. Only in Idaho. Actually, it's vanilla with potato flakes but it really was yummy.

The other high point was just before lunch when we rode through the Thousand Springs area. There were several waterfalls that appeared to flow out of cracks in the cliffs.

Pictures are here

At dinner tonight, everyone looked like a cross between a scene from Dawn of the Dead and The Charge of the Light Brigade. If anyone has any control over wind direction, can you please put in a good word for us. Today was the hardest ride so far and tomorrow is 10 miles longer. The good thing is that we cross into another new state, Wyoming

Signing off now. I just found that we can get the Tour de France on tv here...