Day 7.. early start to coffee, road mistake, bikeing level up, hot chow
I got an early start, Heading out of Tim and Wendy‘s. 8 miles Down the road to a small local diner at Swan Lake. Food and Coffee there was delicious and definitely hit the spot. I spent quite a bit of time there, checking messages, writing posts, and working on photos, And stepped on my guava mimosa
While there I came across in the Norwegian couple Also touring who recommended a bicycle app that pairs up with my map. Now I’ve got the capability to see how many miles it is between next points exactly and how much elevation change I have. It’s a good addition to my journey. They also said they’re going to take the road around the lake. Looking at the map, it looked promising. No elevation gain, A road ride, and a photo opportunity.
It was a bad choice on my part. There was almost no shoulder and more cars than I wanted to see. The photo op was OK but it wasn’t as good as I thought it was gonna be. Overall, it was a stressful 24 miles.
I took the first opportunity I could to get back on the trail. And I had a really big climb coming up.
On my climb/walk there was two young kids who passed me up. We chatted briefly. On the downhill, they stopped for some thing, so I passed him again. However, on the next uphill, I was walking they were passing me. One of the kids looked over at me and said “you can do it you have bar ends”. And then, as he passed me, I watched him and his technique on how he was using his bar ends. Bar ends are the crooked portions at the end of your handlebars. I put mine on thinking that I wanted to add more hand positions. However, unbeknownst to me, they served a different purposes.
After watching this kid, I gave them a try by standing up on my petals and using the correct portions of my handles in order to get some leverage. It worked sublimely. This little technique leveled up my biking skills, and now I’m able to climb steep, or climbs without getting off my bicycle. This technique allowed me to get to the highway Sooner than I expected. So I took a mile detour down to a restaurant in order to get some food.
I got there at 8 o’clock an hour before they close and was completely wiped out exhausted. Appetizer, beer, stake sandwich, and a big piece of cheesecake really hit the spot. My waiter told me it was 8 miles to the Holland Lake campsite but it seemed like an easy ride. It was not as easy as I thought it was, but it was because I was approaching 80 miles for the day. Luckily my waiter was wrong and it was only about 5 miles total.
As soon as I got to the campsite, I threw down a tent, blew up my mattress Climbed in my sleeping bag and crashed. I did over eight hours of actual riding, 84 miles with over 4000 feet of elevation gain.A full day.
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