Written by Dave

Day 31 – June 28 – 99 Miles, 2,240 feet climbing (Shoshoni to Casper)

Ok, the title is wrong. We only rode 99 miles to reach Casper. I couldn’t talk anyone in the bunch into riding in circles around the hotel carpark to ensure we actually rode the full 100 miles. Regardless, I’m calling it a century because I’m writing the blog today and also because no one really cares, it’s just a number. For the record, it is our second century ride of the week – 102 miles on Monday and 100 today. Both rides were definitely wind-aided but all the same 100 miles is 100 miles, so woohoo. Today’s ride took almost exactly 6 hours door-to-door.  Details below.

Before we get to the ride we have to comment on more on the Desert Inn in Shoshoni. The bed was firm and the sheets clean. Sure, those are basic entry points for most hotel but we didn’t hold high hopes for either when we first saw the room. And this morning, the free biscuits and gravy brekkie was passable, not amazing, but certainly passable. All’s well that ends well at an “adventure hotel.” Even though we had brekkie at the hotel, we stopped for a second brekkie at ¼ mile, at the truck stop simply because we knew we had a long day and also because we trusted the water there more than we did the hotel. We finally rolled out of Shoshoni at 6AM.

I was told yesterday by my senior editor that I didn’t need to stop for photos today because I had already taken lots of photos of the Wyoming grass and nothingness. In other words, “it’s a long day Dave, don’t go stopping all the time or we’ll never get there.” Well, Nancy was right, there was very little of anything that merited stopping today.  We saw a few antelope, including some young ones but they scattered when they saw us so no photo stops there. We had some nice “cowboy silhouette art” made by the good folks at 370first.com that merited a stop or two. I didn’t stop at all of them and the gang slowed for me to catch back on for the ones I did stop at. Thanks teammates!

By far the best stop of the day for us came at mile 17 when we came across Cindi, Chris’s wife, parked just off the road. She had driven out from Casper to fill our water bottles and, more importantly, to take our bags from us. Given that the first half of the ride was 1-2% uphill the entire way, the bag snag was most welcome. While we were chatting with Cindi we got the first indications of the wind coming up and good news, it was coming from behind us. From leaving Cindi all the way to Casper, some 82 miles later, we had growing tailwinds. It was a joyful ride.

We made three other stops on the road. The first one was at the rest area where we had planned to get water. The rest area looked great in the WYDOT online images but much worse in person. They are working on the toilet blocks, had port-to-potties and no potable water (thanks again for bringing water Cindi). The second stop was at Hell’s Half Acre, a 320-acre geologic oddity that is composed of deep ravines, caves, rock formations and hard-packed eroded earth. You can’t see much from the road but we stopped anyway. The last stop was to change a rear flat tire on my bike. I ran over a screw and lost air quickly. Having no bags on the bike made the change fast. There was quite a bit of debris on the road today, including screws and lots of bolts.  We all wondered whether the stray bolts ever had an impact on the trailers, trucks or cars from which they went missing.

We’ve ridden the last 11 days without a rest day, some 714 miles in total. We arrived here on exactly the day we planned all those months ago sitting on the Oregon Coast. The reason today was so important and also the reason for Cindi being here is that Chris and his siblings are scheduled to have a graveside ceremony tomorrow to bury their mother’s ashes. Chris’s mom loved to travel and would have appreciated that Chris rode his bicycle all the way here for the service. Naturally, all members of the “Chris Crossing America” team are quite satisfied to have helped Chris reach this trip goal on schedule and mishap free.  

We arrived so early today that Chris and I both managed to get our hair cut. It’s a bit of a walk into town but Cindi’s hire car was available so that was easy. Picking up that missing mile would have been straightforward had we ridden our bikes but neither of us felt any obligation! Tomorrow we are not planning riding anywhere. We have a few chores and may work on the bikes. We need to inspect our brake pads and find a grocery store. Nancy says that she may not get out of bed – we’ll see.

After more than a month of mostly cafe and bar meals, tonight we talked everyone into going to the nearby Hokkaido Ramen restaurant.  It is a short walk from our hotel and was actually quite delicious.  Though, it didn’t appear that anyone in the restaurant spoke Japanese, so no chances for Nancy to practice.