Today I tried a new strategy to deal with the neck pain I have been having as I ride my bicycle, a neck brace which I bought at Walgreens in Reno. We rode 77 miles today and this picture was taken at about mile 60 with virtually no neck pain, that is why I am smiling in the picture. The main negative thing was that my neck was hotter than the surface of the Sun. But a hot neck is an easy trade off for eliminating that neck pain. It was so much more fun today riding with little pain in my neck, butt, hands, legs, and knees. Hopefully the rest of the trip will be as good and even better as I get in better and better shape. It was overcast and very cool when we took off this morning so I didn’t put any sunscreen on, and the sun came out and I forgot all about no sunscreen so tonight My face is feeling as hot as my neck did during the day. As we rode South today in Nevada the terrain was high dessert with lots of sage brush, barren hills, and sand. Today was a major challenge because of rumble strips. They were 12 inches wide with about 12 inches of pavement to ride on between the rumble strip and the dirt. It was so high pressure trying to not veer off in either direction and hit the rumble strips and shake the bike apart or go out in the soft dirt and risk wrecking. There was so much truck traffic that none of us felt comfortable riding on the road side of the rumble strip which put you beyond the white line which will earn you many negative responses from drivers, and also those trucks going by us inches away and about blowing us over in the backwash created. The cool thing about a trip like this is that there are always challenges and problems to solve, just like life.