Day 7 -- Lovelock, NV to Winnemucca, NV

Miles: 75.81

Total Miles: 501.39
Time: 5:47

Average Speed: 13.1 mph

Max Speed: 22.6 mph

Flats Today: 0

Total Flats: 0

Elevation Gain: 1710 ft

Weather: 25 mph headwinds around 70 degrees

Today's entry will also be short for 2 reasons... 1) We just had another day of endless headwinds, so we are really tired, and 2) We are in the middle of nowhere, so there aren't that many things to talk about. We ate breakfast at the Cowpoke Cafe, and got on the road around 7:15. To start out the rough day, I had a devistating injury. I was putting on my shirt, and I threw out my back. Wade helped me out by giving me some words of encouragement, "I think you're getting old Dad." That made it tougher to breath, so the day was going good already. Not even a quarter of a mile into it did we realize what we were in for. We were cruising around 12 mph into a 25 mph wind, and we were passing people. We would be feeling ok, then a 40 mph gust would knock us down to 9 mph. It was rough. We would be going down hill and Wade would say, "Wow, we're flying... I think I hit 15 mph on that hill." We've experienced some high winds, but nothing quite like this. One of our guides, who has been riding for a numerous amount of years, said this was the toughest wind he has ever faced. Aren't we lucky. Anyway, we rode about 10 miles, then we came to a dark, scary tunnel that went under I-80. We took some pictures, then moved on. This time, instead of just riding a 3 man pace line, we tried our very first ever double pace line. It was kind of complicated at first because the riders rotated from one line to the next, but we caught on fast. It helped out a little bit with the wind, but that wind was still crazy. We stayed in that pace line for the next 15 miles until the first sag stop.

After the nice stop, we got back with the people in the double pace line, and we continued our struggle, except then we got on I-80 again. That helped a little bit because of the brief wind reliefs when the trucks flew by. For 16 miles, we struggled along in our double pace line against the relentless wind, all the way to our next sag stop. We did see a snow capped mountain in the desert, so the scenery was still nice, but the wind wasn't. There were also a lot of cattle guards that we had to ride over, so the pavement turned out nice too.

We headed out from that sag stop with the double paceline, and stayed with them until we got off I-80. Once we exited, we slowed down the pace and just made it in. We saw two dead coyotes about 5 miles apart, and a bunch of sand. Did I mention it was windy, wind sucks. Also, we went to mass when we got to the hotel today, and we found 3 other guys that wanted to come along with us.

I got an email yesterday showing me the new executive bathroom at Choice One. I guess my office is more useful now than it was when I was there. First a nap room, now a bathroom... At least I know it's getting cleaned. As you can see, Matt is actually doing work when I'm gone, unlike Jeff and Andy.