Day 27 Serpentine Route through Kentucky Sanders – Stanton, KY 107 miles

I thought today was going to be a tough one, and it was. Not a yard of the route was flat. Hills and more hills slowed me considerably and ate up the daylight too quickly. A northeast headwind plastered me all day. I felt like I was on the beach in winter. However, it was cool and dry. Overnight I shivered the hours away in my tent and was happy to bike in long pants and a jacket for the first hours of the day. Autumn beckons.

The scenery today was pleasant. I passed many small farms in the first part of the day. The hills made me stop frequently to pet horses and goats. As the sun rose I spotted several deer, and heard herons, kingfishers, and coyotes. In the middle of the day I entered horse racing country around Lexington. It reminded me of the area I grow up in around Chester County, Pennsylvania. There were many well manicured farms with giant stately horses apparently well fed; none would take my meager offering of roadside grass when I stopped occasionally to look at the Kentucky map. The terrain around Lexington would make a great extended roller coaster ride.

The hills of the eastern United States have kind of crept up on me. So much toil was spent on the Rockies. Then there was the mental grind of pedaling through the corn belt. That is over. I shifted gears like a madman today. Tomorrow will be more of the same and maybe worse as I go up into the Appalachian hills of eastern Kentucky and western Virginia. My quads have already forgotten about their two day break this past weekend.

What helps on massive challenges like some mountain gaps I will ascend over the next 48 hours is zero distractions. A bicycle, especially one with a loaded machine, has apparently been such a spectacle for some Kentucky folks that they cannot help but say something when driving by. The roads are narrow and the traffic has been heavy. Ideally this will change over these tough passes so I can focus on the difficulties ahead. Ideally it would be just the sound of me and the machine reaching for the divide and pushing towards the ocean.

Day 23 Planes, Trains, and Bike across the Grainy Plain Pittsfield – Plana, IL 113 miles

I got a gift today: no wind and the flattest day of the trip. I realized that the bluff country around the Mississippi at the end of the day yesterday gave it that New England feel, but today it got really hill-less. It probably gave me 20 more miles that my legs otherwise did not have. Even though it was hot (low 90’s), this kind of flatness allowed me to get in a cadence I could sustain for a long time; Now that my resting pulse is 40, a flat road allowed me to just turn pedals over with little difficulty except the eventual fatigue of the legs.

This weekend I have planned to stop for two days in Kentucky. I have never been there. It will give me to rest before the push over the Apps. I passed a stunning amount of corm and soy, but no wildlife. Corn is so abundant here that the 10 foot high stalks serve as a windbreak if they are planted close enough to the road, and they are. Trains are quite the presence out here, hauling grain and coal in many directions. The noise this engineer made almost suggested the locomotive had never been photographed before.

The closer I get to the east coast, the more I am struck by the vastness and diversity of our country. In six hours time a plane took me all the way across the continent, and now over a month to get back. Sometimes I’ll peer into the sky and wonder where all the vapor-streaming jets are headed. A few hundred miles east of Denver, I thought a pack of them were headed there; for a moment I wanted to turn around and follow them since Colorado mountains are familiar and attractive territory to me.

Of course, the diversity of people in the U.S. is as stunning as the diversity of landscapes. I wondered what this food store sign would say of it was in Newport Oregon; maybe dungennes crab and geoduck clam. In Sneads Ferry perhaps it would say shrimp and oysters. Anyway, I was perfectly content to pass on the store specials and kept riding through the miles of corn. My legs might be starting to resemble frogs legs right now.

Out of nowhere, for the last 20 miles of my trip, I caught a bike path that paralleled the road. After getting passed by thousands of trucks, it is a treat the find a bike path and turn my mind off to the traffic. The first autumn mulberry and alder leaves are falling and the crickets serenaded me as I pedaled on.

Day 12 Barren Ground and Big Hill - II Flaming Gorge Reservoir Dam , UT – Maybell, CO 129 miles

In the morning I awoke to cows mooing near my tent. After a quick pack-up I ate breakfast with some friendly folks from Salt Lake City. They prepped me for what lay ahead, and I was not particularly thrilled by what I heard – hills and a long way to my destination, Maybell.

First thing pedaling I had to try to exit the gorge basin, which meant going uphill into a biting headwind on a rough road. After eight meager miles, Paul needed a time out. I stopped by a meadow stream at about 8000 feet elevation and carefully walked its cutbanks looking for trout. Sure enough, there were quite a few, and I could hear their slurping of grasshoppers that hit the water. The mental reset at the trout stream helped.

It was a very hilly day. Yesterday I remarked that the hill on the west side of the gorge was the worst I had biked, but that certainly there are ones worse still. I was reminded off this dropping off the back side of Flaming Gorge going south on US 191 towards Vernal, Utah. Just a monster hill, maybe not quite as steep as the one I took on Day 11, but about twice as long. I could feel the temperature increase by about 15 degrees on the way down it, as I lost rough 3000 feet of elevation.

I reached a very hot Vernal at noon and still had 90 miles to go when I left there at 1 PM. The next 30 miles were very tough heading east on US 40; headwind, rough road, no shoulder, lots of noisy traffic – essentially nothing good. Even tumbleweed blew into my bike chain. My mirror shook off due to the rough road. “It’ll be different in Colorado,” I told myself. And it was.

Thunderstorms were trying to develop all afternoon. By the time I reached Colorado, the clouds had fortunately occluded an oppressively hot sun. The 90 degree shift in direction of US 40 starting at the Utah-Colorado border helped me a ton. Suddenly I was making double the speed on the same road as the wind and road shifted directions.

Sixty miles is still a long way to pedal when it’s four in the afternoon and you’re already beat down by 70 miles in a hot sun. So I just counted down one mile at a time. Once again, the weather turned into my late-day ally. The tailwind held. Dark clouds covered the sun. How dry is it here in this barren part of the west? I could see the rain falling but it evaporated before it hit the ground. A couple groups of antelope stopped grazing long enough to watch me ride by.

The road conditions just kept on getting better and better, with hardly any traffic. My hands even parted ways with the brakes long enough that I got 40 miles per hour down one hill. That’s a big deal for a guy that has wrecked himself too many times with speed sports.

Tt was growing dark at about 8 PM and I had a few miles left on roller coaster US 40 to make my destination. I turned my mind off and just cranked. Finally I crested a hill and there it was, the town on Maybell, a valley oasis in the middle of the desert. A tiny valley town like this is a pretty site after such a tiring day in the desert, after a long day when you hope that mind, body, bike, and water all hold up… and they did. A beautiful border collie greeted me at the campground upon my arrival. I have never been to Maybell before, and may never again, but tonight it is home.

A tribute to Lance

I marvel at Lance Armstrong’s ability at age 37 to not only compete in the Tour de France but to excel. Almost half way through the 2009 edition of the most difficult sporting event in the world, Armstrong sits a mere eight seconds back of the lead. Opponents and naysayers will hope that the next biking phenom, another litany of hecklers, or convalescing legs will cause him to fall out of contention. I, however, am hoping that he can turn back the clock of father time and add one more chapter to his unique legacy.

What do Lance Armstrong and I have in common? Likely a couple things. Besides a love for biking, we are both riding for a cause, I for the Outer Banks Wildlife Shelter and him, of course, for cancer research and awareness. We are both aware that long bike journeys that test the mind and body are attention grabbers by which the public can become aware of issues far more important than ourselves alone.

Will the 2009 Tour de France end with Lance Armstrong as champion again? Today, nobody knows. But Armstrong’s legacy is already cemented. His lung busting climbs over steep mountains on France have conjured up the following image in my own mind...

At the base of the last long hill you peer over your shoulder. A few of the world’s best riders and there with you, ready to put their last bit of energy into destroying your chances for victory this afternoon at Sestriere. This is the race of truth. A first place finish here might cement your bid to win not just any tour, but the Tour de France.

You peer over your shoulder again. The next long minutes of your life will tell you whether the toil of winter training rides will bear fruit. How many bitter rides through unrelenting rains brought you to this race and a climb where the maillot jaune could finally be yours for good. You breathe hard. Your face shows the fatigue, but your competitors do not feel so well either. Their grimaces tell a tale of 213 punishing kilometers cycling through the heart of Europe’s high peaks.

Now you see who will crack. It might be you. You push the stakes higher. You leave the saddle and go. Beltran is the first to fall from the group. Then Escartin is dropped. Two rides dropped, two to go.

The grade steepens and you sense you’ve opened a gap. Another peer over your shoulder to gaze at your competition would just rot your own precious strength. So you focus straight away. You envision the world’s last two drops of energy trickling down into your two massively tired legs. Pain is your only companion. Your vision becomes narrow. The world becomes small, just your legs turning tiny wheels up the jagged road. At the crux of the climb Gotti falls off the pace. The climb boils down to your and Zuelle.

Round the last corner and the finish tape is waving. You sense victory and free your mind for a final glance down the hill. Zuelle is long gone from your wheel. The best riders have been systemically dropped. The sun is drowned by mountain haze but the color is yellow. As yellow as your jersey. Yellow, the color of triumph high atop the slopes of Sestriere.