July 18 2014 Montevideo to Hutchison

There were two orders of the day today.  The 20-30 mph south wind, which over the 85 mile ride, was a side wind for close to 70 miles.  The second order of the day was the chunk, chunk, chunk of your bike hitting the frost heave cracks, every 30 feet.

I left camp with Ed W as he did the routing today and therefore got to ride his route.  It is great riding with the router as not only do you have the arrows on the pavement but you have the router with you, so getting lost is very hard to do.  We were soon on a very rural back road which had the cross cracks. Each of the cracks was about 1.5 “ across and about 1 “  deep.  It didn’t take long before the constant chunk, chunk, chunk got really tiring and my butt wasn’t very happy about it either. 

The cross wind didn’t seem so bad at first but as the day progressed it got worse and worse.  At one point we had to do about 8 miles due south and it was a killer. Before picnic Ed and I rode in side by side taking turns on the windward side.  At picnic we met up with Ken C so the three of us rode together in echelon formation taking turns on the windward side. Keeping a straight line in the wind and with the cross cracks was a challenge, but it made the miles drop off.

Picnic was in Olivia which is the corn capital. The city park had the worlds largest cob of corn.  Fittingly we had corn on the cob for picnic. I was concerned how well it would sit on the bike ride but it was fine.

Tonight is the big Greg Walsh look alike contest.  Everybody is busy shaving their whiskers.  It is a big job scraping off two weeks of whiskers.  I have a clip board, a staff shirt, a toque like Greg wore in the first week, and a pair of work gloves.   Some guys are busy using Grecian Formula on their white beards. I made up the prizes for the contest. First prize is a gift certificate good for one week on Cycle America (expired). Second prize is two weeks. Third prize is a Cycle America luggage tag. 

The contest turned out great. Everyone had a tremendous time.  Greg was totally surprised by the whole affair.  Nobody has ever done this before.  Jos won the first prize and I got second place ( more  later)

Terry