PACTour Day 4/19 - Never Underestimate your adversary

Each tour or camp that PAC Tour puts on spawns a wonderful, topical, colorful cycling jersey.  Jim and Will wore their 2008 Ridge of the Rockies jersey's today for the first time.

The morning rollout group was sizeable and grew to about 12 by the first Rest stop (R1)

The views were spectacular today, but hard to enjoy concentrating on the small breakdown lanes, their debris and passing vehicles.

Will and Jim towed a small group into the headwind up the unending climb.  You might notice Will's rear wheel is nearly flat.  More on this later.

Riding along a river all day, against its current of travel, implies that you are riding uphill all day....

After R2 we again rode in a small peleton.  Leading the pack is Andrew, an anesthesiologist from Australia.  Notice Will always cleverly positioned.

Fly fishermen enjoying the day.

And riverboaters too.

We rolled thru the West edge of Yellowstone Park today.  Our friend Joel Goodman who we rode the last 30+ miles with snapped this photo for us.

We waited a long while on the creek bank, but the Turk never showed up??

Today's 90 mile stage.  Notice the interminable climb.

Garmin's representation of the data.

Apparently the motel figured that we would be overheated when we got in - notice the 2 "Cold" spigots.

SunTzu's treatise "The Art of War" surely has a section discussing never underestimating your adversary. Will and Jim should have reflected on that before the ride today. They figured, hey 90 miles, 3300 feet of climbing - an easy fast recovery ride, right? No problem. Wrong!! First problem, the forecast - 30 mph wind out of the south, and we were heading due south. Next the 70 miles of 1-3% constant uphill grade, into that headwind. Mix in a lot of chipseal rough surface, and a small shoulder with lots of crap and holes to ride on and dodge, and quite a bit of traffic including 18 wheelers passing at 70mph. End result - a challenging, not an easy day for sure.

Will did great, we all rode safely and got thru the day. Unfortunately the conditions didn't lend themselves to enjoying the views which were spectacular. They were exposed to a bit of (minor) PAC Tour cycling etiquette. Will and Jim pulled a group for 10 miles from first R1 stop, then Will had a rear flat. Will and Jim stopped and the other kept going!! What is up with U.S. cyclists and lack of cycling manners. In Europe (and if you are doing a B-H ride) riders stop for the 5 minutes it takes for a mechanical then continue. It's called Fellowship. Oh well, the others probably wanted to get off the road as their primary motivation...

Tomorrow's stage is one of the Queen's stages for the tour.  135 miles with a 3 mile 10% climb thru Teton Pass at mile 120 into Wyoming.  Will recovered from today's slog, with massage, Jim recovered doing laundry.  Dinner was at a great little Take Away joint run by a New Zealander.  She was out of meat pies so the boys had burgers, and fish and chips.

Turk mentioned John Lake hot dogs.  John Lake is one of the crew this year and also last year. Last year when the whole family did the Northern transcontinental we always looked forward to lunch when John was cooking.  Nobody can grill a hot dog like John Lake. We doubt Susan will even serve hot dogs this year.  You see, John Lake has motel trailer duty this tour so he's not cooking (wah!!) Today's brautwursts (Will ate 3) and yesterdays grilled chicken breast were pretty darned good, however.

Buster mentioned Lonisms - only a few small inside jokes shared between Will and Jim.  They'll have to introduce these into the group as the tour progresses.  Buster also mentioned the SCARY METAL THINGS.  You know, I think this years riders are a little braver than previous?  The use them at least 1/3 of the time.

Thanx for reading - tune in tomorrow.  The wild card right now is Jim.  He caught the "Belgian Flu" from Marc after riding with him 3 days ago.  Tonight he is freezing and has fever.  Hopefully early lights out and motrin will do the trick...