Well according to the elevation profile for today’s miles it was supposed to be an easy day because of very few hills. The problem is we switched hills for a 4 to 7 mph head wind. So here I sit in our campsite with no energy left to put up my tent. I laid down on the bench on our picnic table and told John to wake me in the morning. I think he thought I was going to die, but I assured him I would wake up in the morning. The bench was to hard to sleep long on, but I do have enough energy to put up my tent, blow up my mattress and spread out my sleeping bag now.

As we were riding I was grumbling in my mind about how a day with very flat roads was being ruined with this stupid wind. We saw a couple bicycle riders coming towards us from the other side. We stopped and they came over to us for a chat. It was a 74 year old man with his grandson and they had started where we are going to finish in Maine and they are going to finish on the northern Washington coast. As we were talking he mentioned how nice it was to have a tail wind for a change. I thought, I am 65 and you are 74, OK I will let you have the tail wind and I will take the head wind. In the book I am reading about training Navy Seals, they have a motto that they repeat often which is, “Enjoy the suck”! The “suck” is when you are gasping for air but still going. So as our friends pedaled away I said softly to myself, “Enjoy the suck”!

I would like to do this again with one of my grandsons before I get to old and to limited by Parkinson’s. Be a great environment to teach character. I will have to see if one of my kids will let me do that with one of their kids one of these days.

We bicycled 58 miles today and the road from beginning to end was straight as a string. There were high places where you could see the road off in the distance going on for what looked like infinity. Very, very foggy in the morning, but by 10 am it was a beautiful, sunshiny day. We rode through big farms all day with lots of corn, soy beans, wheat, alfalfa, and sunflowers, very beautiful.

Tomorrow night we will be in Moorhead, Minnesota at a nice campground and we will have our rest day there on Friday. I am so much looking forward to that day! Yeh!

I have now lost 12 pounds. Started out at 225, was 213 this morning, my goal is 188, what I weighed the day I got married 45 years ago, so I have 25 more to go.

Love you all. Dee