Rest days are super, but the day after the rest day is a day of will power. I didn’t want to get out of my sleeping bag at 5 am this morning, but I did, I didn’t want to get on that torture tool called a bicycle seat, but I did, I didn’t want to pedal as hard as I could all day long, but I did, and the list goes on. A couple of days ago I wrote about the 7 things I hate on bicycle trips. I was being sarcastic and using hyperbole in an attempt to be funny and entertaining, and imitate my favorite short story writer Patrick McManus. In reality those 7 things that I said I hated are the reason that I have gone on these bicycle trips for the last 8 years. If none of them were a reality these trips would be easy and boring, because there would be no challenge. It is the challenge, the contest, the fight, the opponent that makes these trips attractive, just to see if I can win. I want to grow in character, and that only happens when we are forced to will our lazy bodies to do what they don’t want to do. This picture represents the 8th thing I hate on bicycle trips, and that is a head wind. Today we rode straight into an 8 to 10 mph head wind all day long. Head winds like today’s make it so you have to pedal even when you are going down hill, aaaaarrrgghh! Fairly regularly while riding I coast for a minute to rest, but not with a head wind, when you attempt to coast you just stop, so it is all out hard as you can, push all day long. But, just to even it out a bit, there were no mosquitos, no dogs, and no rain today. Yikes, that almost sounded boring!

We biked 55 miles today, and besides the head wind it was all mostly uphill climbing so I was tuckered out when we got to camp. We are in a town in Idaho called New Meadows and are at a campground called “Creek Side Campground”. Tomorrow will be a long one in that we will be going 80 miles with a bunch of climbing. I think tomorrow I will splurge and instead of a freeze dried dinner I will go to a restaurant and have a steak.