Day 7 Coasting toward Boise

First you have to understand we have a bunch of geeks on this trip.  We have people with Garmin devices that track your speed, heart, altitude, ups, downs - you name it.  Gardner has the best device and it tracks him minute by minute.

You can click on the following link and either see where he is at that specific moment; or you can "zoom out" and see the entire trip.

Click on the following to see where we are that specific moment....

Where in the World is Manicotti?


I have decided to ride right behind Gardner the entire trip - so by default you can track my progress minute by minute.  Or as I mentioned see the entire trip to date.  Here is an example as of the end of day today.

To get the "Total Trip View" - on the right hand side there is a box called Adjustment.  Click on the History box and select "all".

Now you can track me anytime of the day - don't be surprised if you see very little movement after 7 pm (my new bedtime).

The Ride.....

Today was sweet.  It started out at 47 degrees and ended at 87 degrees.  A real swing in temperatures.  It was an 84 mile ride - but at least 50 miles was downhill!!! I rode with Jarret (the photographer from NYC) and Craig (from New Hampshire).

That's Craig in the front.  And here is a better shot of Jarret with the mountains in the background that we went over yesterday.

The only challenge we had today was that we had to get on the Interstate a couple of times when the road we were riding combined with the Interstate.

Thank god it was Sunday (or I think it is Sunday) and road traffic was light.  The road was wide and we were only on this for about 7 miles.  Once we got off and back on the back road we encountered almost no cars.  We went by miles of wheat fields.

I saw my first rattlesnake today.  Luckily it was dead and squished in the road.  I was going to stop and take a picture of it - but decided to keep my distance from it - just in case.

We only passed through two small towns.  One was Huntington Oregon.  Has some quaint facilities.  Here is the local gas station (gas was 93 cents last time it was open).

Here is the local hotel.

Family business.  All the way into town there were signs to visit the local museum.  Seemed it specialized in train locomotives and covered wagons.  I could not wait to get there.

Huntington has another weird thing about it.  Right outside of town the time zone changes from Pacific to Mountain time.

I was trying to figure out how you could live right on the line. If you live on the Huntington side it might be 8 am, while on the other side of the sign it would 9 am.  What time would you set your alarm clock to in order to wake up and go to work on the other side of the sign.  Would you constantly be late to work?  What if your kid went to school on the "Pacific time side" and you worked on the Mountain side.  What time would you leave work to pick him/her up?  I had a mental breakdown trying to figure this out as I rolled along.  Finally gave up - too much thinking for one day.

As I said the ride was peaceful and quite - that is until the end.  I was about 5 miles outside of town when I got sprayed by the local crop duster.

This damn thing flew about 10 feet off the ground and when it got near the crops it let loose a spray of some kind of chemical.  I was riding with a local rider that I passed and she said "don't worry they know enough not to spray when there are bikers".  Bull.  Got covered with either fertilizer or some chemical that might prevent me from having more children.  

She said I should call the Farm Bureau in the morning and find out whether I needed to worry or not.  I got to the hotel and ran to my room and quickly took a shower.  Was not going to take any chances.

Tomorrow we head to Boise.  I think it is a 65 mile ride.  Then we get our first break day.  First priority is to find a laundry mat.  I have been spraying my riding clothes with sunscreen to mask the smell - but I noticed fewer and fewer people want to ride behind me.

Have a good night.