We sadly had to wake up at 4:00 again this morning. I had truly gotten use to the quality sleeping in after just one day. We slowly got ourselves moving though and returned to our usual ride ritual. Veterans Village had a breakfast spread prepared for us that we all lined up for, before our route meeting.
Today's ride had previously put a lot of people on edge, due to some B&B rumors we had been spreading. A big part of not always knowing what's coming is when someone says an elevation or distance you believe them and as it gets passed around it typically starts to sound worse and worse. So we thought it was going to be a crazy hard climb and could be over 90 miles long. In the end we found out it was just 72 miles with a very gradual to medium climb for the first 40 and then mainly down hill for the last 30. Due to rumors though a lot of people decided to ride solo for part of the day incase it was more challenging than planned. However following route meeting I got together with Ben, Dave, and Justin so we could ride out. Kalli also decided to join us for a bit so that she wasn't riding through the city alone.
The first part of the ride wasn't bad at all I actually was extremely happy it was a nice gradual climb to first lunch at mile 29 with some beautiful scenery and signs for donkeys (I've been enjoying the random animal signs). I also finally replaced the cleats on my bike shoes that hold them to my pedals and found that they really had been long over due. It was so easy to pull up and just really made for a nice ride.
We had a nice first lunch at a strange local gas station change associated with Chevron, called Terrible's. It was actually perry nice and had some picnic tables and a cool cowboy guy that is suppose to be/is named "Terrible".
We then hit the main part of the hill it was about a 10 mile 2000 ft climb so truly not too bad for us at this point. It was also really nice because for some reason we were all pretty together on the hill and kept passing each other which let us provide good moral support. However like most long hills nothing was as nice as seeing the horizon with nothing beyond it to signal more climb.
We had a beautiful down hill into our second lunch (since it was over 90 degrees and will be the next week or so). Justin and I were able to really just cruise and may not have even pedals for upwards of 15 miles. Our group made one stop going into second lunch to help a lady with a flat tire. Even though the road was filled with cyclists today, the tire was not a bike tire, we helped lift a truck tire on for a change.
Second lunch was great but short since we were doing pretty good and we wanted to keep heading into Pahrump. We stopped filled up on water had a quick snack and were riding. We then pulled off to take, what will definitely be, the winning sweepstakes video at the Pahrump sign. The sweepstakes today as to shake your rump on the hump to Pahrump, so just use your imagination since I can't post videos on here from my phone.
We then finished our ride and made it to town. We all were at the community center where we arrived nice and early. One of our host organizers, as tonight we are at different hosts doing home stays, was named Lenny and he helped us put on a movie and get comfortable since - medium group of us had arrived by 1:00. A group also made a Walmart run and just did various things around the area. We then feasted on Chinese food for the first time this trip. Everyone was quite quite happy and really enjoyed the treat.
After dinner we then put our stuff all out. As the trip has been going for awhile, our stuff has gotten dirty, and we won't have laundry for 3 days, we decided to wash all of our washables. We also decided to do so without our loops for a change to make sure things really got clean and dry. So we put that out for the leaders who with the help of a few others were going to rise care of it for us. They the did so but it sounds like tomorrow sorting and getting moving in the morning may take a bit longer than normal since we washed everything. When they departed though for the laundromat the rest of us headed to our hosts. Brad, Lisa, Margaret and I made our way to Lenny's where his dad had gone out and bough us more food. We snacked on chips, salsa, fruit, veggies, and ice cream while watching The Kingsmen. The food was great since it was basically perishables that we never can carry with us in bulk due to refrigeration and then the movie was just another treat since we had two today and that may be half the TV I've watched all summer. It was a great evening and we were really appreciative. The laundry crew just joined us and we are about to go to bed. I do want to say posts the next few day may be as scared as a lake or pond in Death Valley since the rarity of wifi and data is expected to be high. I therefore ask you all I assume we are okay and happy with the details to come when we reach the far side.