And for thirty miles, I had a giant gob of mud inside the rear mud flap acting like a brake.
It looked like this all day.
See, there was this short cut the Delorme TopoUSA software found. We rode five miles out of town to discover our short cut was not actually paved. Jim: "Do we have to do this?" Drew: "Yes, and the GPS says it's only a half mile." Well, it was one of those cases where the "turn" on the GPS is really just a name change for the same dirt road that goes on for two more miles, and then hits a T on another dirt road and you go a half mile down the other dirt road to find it ends, and then you turn around and push the trike back through the mud hole where the gray clay oozes all over the gears, brakes, and mud flaps until finally you get back to the nice paved highway.
The short cut through the mud cost about an hour. Then it was back to riding through the drizzle into the headwind.
Here is a cool collapsed bridge at the end of the unpaved portion of our trip.
To make all this worse, we decided we would ride 20 miles and then eat breakfast, instead of eating before we left. That 20 miles included the unpaved short cut. So we didn't get to food until lunchtime, when we go to Italy (pronounced Ittly). Our Ittlian food was barbeque at this place right off the exit of the interstate.
20 miles after lunch, I realized the headwinds couldn't be as bad as they felt, and discovered the wedge of clay inside the rear mud guard that had been acting as a brake for the last 30 miles.
It was just a long grind into the headwind for 40 more miles to the Motel 6. First thing I did was to hose off the bike and relube everything.
We had dinner at a decent steak place across the highway from the 6. I was so beat, I forgot to take a picture. There was no wifi to make blog entry anyway, I'm writing this the next day.
Here's the MotionBased page.
It was a very grueling day.
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