Written by Dave

Day 28 – June 25 – 32 Miles, 1,600 feet climbing (Cody to Meeteetse)

Early on the trip, Pete set himself up to be noted as the last to be ready every morning. He seemed to have lots of reorganizing every day that slowed his progress. To be fair, he was not always last every day, just mostly every day for the first week or so and that cemented his position in the pecking order. A good example of Pete’s progression was Nancy and I holding the team back 10 minutes in Riggins, ID – Pete was ready right on time that day. And for sure, the last week, Pete was almost always right on time.

If Pete was the last to be ready, then Curtis lived on the other end of the time spectrum. He’s been ready as much as an hour early some days and probably no less than 30 minutes early every other day. He has never been last, period. Since Pete left us, Chris as gracefully slotted into the last to be ready roll. He seemed proud of his hard work.

I write all of the above because today when we departed the hotel, Nancy and I were first to be ready and next came Chris. Finally, maybe 2 minutes later, out rolls Curtis with his bike. We were all stunned and commented to Curtis that he was taking on “Pete’s roll”. Curtis was truly stunned. I don’t think he has been last to anything ever in his life, ever! His response:

“How humiliating, that will never happen again!”

Group dynamics on a long trip are hard to predict. So far, we’ve had great camaraderie. Naturally, Curtis took this morning’s ribbing in stride. And it started the morning off right, as we all burst out laughing.  But yes, I also suspect he will NOT be last ever again.

That said, on to today’s ride… Our bonus 38 miles with the wind yesterday gave us the option of rejigging our schedule. To do so however, would have required hotel changes for a couple days. We have booked hotels in this part of the ride because the RV parks are mostly out of business or don’t exist. Leaving the hotel schedules intact meant we only had 32 miles to ride today – a proper “active rest day”. We decided to leave schedule as is.

This morning, there was hardly a puff of wind in Cody. We shared a collective “woohoo” at our decision yesterday to ride the tailwinds. The wind forecast today was for tailwinds again but they never really came up. We had a late start and still arrived in Meeteetse before noon. We are in the Wyoming grasslands now for sure. We caught glimpse of the Rockies off to the right as we headed southeast but mostly the scenery was grasslands forever in all directions. I still managed a few photos, more to slow our arrival than capture amazing scenery.

It was nice arriving early as we got to look around Meeteetse, what there is of it. It has 390 residents according to the sign at the entry to town, 327 according to the last census. Both numbers are interesting as posters around town highlight 9 seniors graduating from the local high school, which seems like a lot. Much of town is shuttered and many of the businesses are no longer open. They’ve tried to capitalize on this with a couple antique stores and lots of preserved shop fronts. It’s not anywhere near the scale of Virginia City but they’re trying. And for us, having a compact area to stroll is a good result for an active rest day afternoon. We are ensconced in the Meeteetse Inn and more than comfortable.

Tomorrow we have a longer ride to Thermopolis and there are headwinds forecast. We may try being the road before 6AM, which should help with the winds but also with the temperatures. We are not inside the part of the US suffering from the current heat dome but every day we get closer. If it doesn’t move out, we could have issue later in the week. We hope not.