Today was a very tough day of bicycling. We rode 85 miles with over 6,000 feet of accumulated climbing, and it was very, very hot to boot. The first picture is me dunking my shirt in the Powder River to keep me cool for awhile. I tried to pay attention to traffic as I took my shirt off, so as not to cause any wrecks!

We had a number of mountains to climb as well as several really fast descents. Before one of them there was this sign (photo)which made us really excited about the upcoming speed. I nearly had a major wreck on both of these descents. On the first one a bee stung me right on my upper lip while I was barreling down the hill at about 30 mph. When I let loose of the bike handle to kill the bee I started to wobble wildly, but I grabbed the handle again, quickly before I went head over bicycle tumbling down the road. On the second descent I had taken off my helmet and put on my baseball cap so I could dunk it in the water to help keep me cool, well on the way down this hill again going about 30 mph my hat flew off, as I reached up to catch it, My bike again went crazy, and I was sure that I was getting ready for a ride in an ambulance, but I managed to get stopped and I did get my hat.

As we rode into Richland, Oregon we road up to a cafe intending to eat a bite of food. I was so distracted with all the bicycles around the restaurant that I totally spaced unclipping my shoes from the peddles, and as I got close to the restaurant I started to put my right foot down, but to late I realized my foot was locked onto the pedal and because of that mental lapse over I went with all the bikers in the restaurant watching me crash to the ground. I sprained my right wrist, scraped my leg and hand but I cleaned those up in the bathroom, and I am OK tonight.

We are in Baker City tonight and will have our last rest day here tomorrow. It has a very nice swimming pool, hot tub, and great internet, so it should be a very nice day of recuperating tomorrow.