Today is a perfect example of the benefits of pushing yourself. In fact, it was quite wonderful.
The plan for today was to ride 52 miles to a campsite near Sweet Creek or some place like that. The area I'm riding through is wide open scrub, with mountains on one side and ... nothing... on the other. Relatively dry, but I'm not in the waterless Great Divide Basin yet. For a lot of it I was up high along the divide and even crossed it something like 3 or 4 times today.
So, the campsite sucked. I got there about 1:30pm because the first 30 miles were paved and that doesn't count. That sight has been taken over by a horse outfitter. I tried four miles down the road at another place (Lander Creek), and that was cool... but...
Here's the deal. It's a sin to waste a tailwind. I wasn't feeling great that morning so a 52 mile day seemed fine. However, I got to Lander Creek and there was no shade and a tailwind had picked up. So my choices where 1) Hide under a tiny tarp in the shade for something like 5 hours, or 2) Go for a bike ride.
There is an obvious choice there.
The next reasonable spot on the map to camp was something like 35 miles away, so it was a gamble for sure, since that'd make an 85 mile day. And, that spot was iffy - not all the mapped camp spots have water sources that are still flowing - so if that didn't work I'd need to push something like 10-15 more miles to Atlantic City.
So I checked the topo and it looked like just rolling hills, and I had a tailwind, and it was only 2pm, so... go for it! I can push 100 miles if I need to in that. The roads were rough but not terrible.
Holy crap, despite the rather steep rolling hills and 2 or 3 more divide crossings, I made 23 miles in one hour. That is why it's a sin to waste a tailwind. That same 23 miles tomorrow morning would have been easily 2 hours and much harder.
Then I had 9 miles of uphill, sidewind pavement, and a little more gravel to finish up. Storms were brewing all afternoon, and my last miles were running full speed from one. I found the campsite and set up camp quickly in case I needed to take shelter, but the storms missed.
They all did. They've been missing for hours. This campsite is the shit! It's got a nice creek and is surrounded by easily climbed rocks. I've spent most of the evening eating and watching storms literally all around me. Lightning, thunder, etc, but they are barely missing me. I love it. I love watching storms. Today was 85.6 miles, 6:26 on bike, and I got to camp around 5:30.
I've taken up an old habit of talking to myself and everything else. I was super isolated today but have had great conversations with the ground squirrels, trees, and rocks around camp. We're all made up of the same stardust anyway, so I imagine, on some level, the world understands. The squirrels seemed particularly interested when I told them about Andrea. I think that when it comes to atoms becoming sentient: teamwork makes the dream work. Cooperation and togetherness is hardwired into everything that exists, even rocks and storms. The more complicated an entity or organism is, the more complicated the teamwork becomes. That's why I think ground squirrels understand human love (the pinical of human teamwork), it's not that far removed from their own reality.
Also, ground squirrels poop a lot on top of rocks, for some reason. Like, the higher up I climbed, the more poops and the bigger the poops. At some point it looked cat sized. The squirrels gave no explanation when I asked.
The storms and I had some good conversations too. I hit 1,000 miles today on this trip, and think they are celebrating for me. I also really appreciate Wyoming. I've bike toured in Wyoming 4 times now. east to west in 2003, and just the upper right corner in 2007 and 2014. This is the the longest I've biked in it since that 2003 time, and I think Wyoming appreciates me coming back. The tailwinds today were a blessing, and I proved myself back in 2003 when Wyoming gave us massive headwinds.
I keep reading these roadside signs about what it was like to be an explorer, first discovering these areas for yourself (of course, people already lived here) - but even the natives had to discover it at some point (they just don't have signs to commemorate it.) I feel like someone discovering this area myself.
That's one of the things I love about bike touring. When you drive through some place you just drive through it, but on a bike you feel every bump, smell every smell, am affected by every breeze, hill, and water (or lack of water.)
You are a part of it. You are taking part in a conversation with the world. It's a back and forth - the wind pushes and the hills rise, and you breath harder or relax. The sun shines and you sweat or take shelter, or it hides and you dance to warm up. You affect the world as well - bugs draft in your wake, animals respond to your presence, rocks fly off your tires to live somewhere else for awhile. River water gets to come on a ride with you for awhile and then is released somewhere it never thought it'd be.
A car might as well be a space ship, hiding you from the world. Affecting it, sure, but you aren't affected by it. You're cut off from it, the only sense noticing it is your sight, and that's blocked mostly by the box you are in. Maybe you can "see" part the world, but you aren't having a conversation with it.
But today I had a conversation with the world, it wasn't lonely at all.
(Which does not mean I don't miss some very special people and animals ;) )
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