July 14, 2006
Day 43: Saratoga, WY to Rawlins, WY
44.62 Miles, 3:27:23 Ride Time, 13.17 Average Speed, 31.1 Maximum Speed
I had decided the night before to do a short day, and ride only to Rawlins (pop. 8,538), where I could hopefully replace my dead notebook computer. Rawlins would be the largest town I would see in a while, so I needed to get it taken care of there, if at all possible.
The night before, I had asked the older man at the motel's front desk how early I could check out (at that point, of course, I had ambitions for leaving extremely early, and getting to Rawlins with plenty of time to deal with the computer issue). Well, regular readers of this journal can guess what happened: I wasn't ready to leave until almost 9:00. When I finally checked out, the man at the desk chuckled, and said "I thought you'd have been out of here hours ago."
Because I was running late, I skipped a real breakfast, and ate a honeybun instead. Before I left I checked my rear tire, which still seemed to have a slow leak. I decided to pump it up, and deal with it properly when I got to Rawlins.
The first twenty miles were North, and as usual, they went very quickly due to the tailwind - I was averaging 17 or 18 miles per hour for this stretch.,
After twenty miles I reached Walcott (pop. 30), which is basically just a truckstop (and an apparently closed-down diner) at the I-80 interchange. I stopped at the small truckstop for Gatorade and some snack cakes, used the (very dirty) restroom, and steeled myself for something I had never experienced: Riding a bicycle on an interstate highway.
My route called for me to ride the next 13 miles on Interstate 80. This is highly illegal where I'm from, so it felt strange to ride up the entrance ramp. The shoulder was nice and wide, although filled with all sorts of junk I had to be careful to avoid.
By now, it was late morning, and the wind was slowing me down. I got off the interstate at Sinclair (pop. 423). This is a company town, created by the Sinclair oil company, whose large refinery dominates the landscape. There were some nice buildings downtown, but the whole place seemed kind of deserted. I noticed that the public library was only open a couple of days a week - something I'd seen in many small towns I'd ridden through out west.
As I was leaving Sinclair (six miles from my destination of Rawlins), I noticed that the pressure in my rear tire had gotten lower. I stopped to pump it up one more time, but couldn't get any more air in - apparently the leak was around the valve. As I fooled around with it, all the air came out. Now I had to change it.
I walked the bike a few blocks back to a park, where there were some rare (for Wyoming) shade trees. I spent a frustratingly long time replacing the tube. It was very hard to get the tire back on with my bad left wrist, and by the time I was done it was throbbing.
It was now the hottest, windiest part of the day, so the last six or seven miles to Rawlins weren't very fun. I spent quite a bit of time finding a new computer, then checked into one of the motels at the edge of town. My room was nice, but it was on the second floor, and the motel had no elevator, so I had to carry the bicycle up the stairs, which of course wasn't easy with my bum wrist.
After a pretty good dinner at the motel's restaurant, and a trip to the supermarket next door for some Diet Pepsi and snacks to take to my room, I went to bed early, after reflecting on the unpredictability of this whole bicycle-touring thing - what was supposed to be an easy, short day (almost a rest day, really) had been one of the hardest of the trip.
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Today's ride: 45 miles (72 km)
Total: 2,742 miles (4,413 km)
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