Maggie "knocked me up" in the morning to let me know that checkout was at 10:00, not 11:00. No wonder the room was so cheap. I suppose they have to get those rooms cleaned early, so they can accomodate all the people passing through town. Ha! Besides, you're gonna want to get all your work done so that you can spend the rest of the day sitting in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do, right? So I get up and get rolling, and check it out:
It's just like Kansas, complete with the howling wind in my face. It's a perfect sequel to Kansas. If it were a movie, it would be called "I Know What You Did Last Kansas." If I wrote a review of that movie, it would go like this "Freaky Jesus, but does this suck."
I didn't have breakfast in Jeffrey City, having had such a bad experience at the town cafe the night before. So I bonked rather hard, and after 3 hours I had only gone 20 miles.
I limped into Sweetwater Station and bought a sandwich, which I ate at a highway rest stop. The picnic tables has specially designed barriers around them to block the northern winds. This, my dear readers, is not a good sign. I ate my food then got back on the ike and saw Bubba trying to thumb a ride. I rolled up to make sure that his bike was okay. Turns out that he'd been booting all morning and was trying to get a ride to Lander so he could sleep off his illness.
I waited for a while and didn't see much in the way of traffic (Wyoming has less than 500,000 residents, and most of them don't live in Sweetwater Station. Surprise, surprise). After a few minutes I offered to attach his trailer to my bike, just in case he couldn't hitch a lift. He declined and said he's be okay. I had my doubts, but headed off after he assured me he'd be okay.
About an hour later, as I struggled into the wind, a highway truck passed me. A familiar green body was hanging out the passenger side window. After offering me a ride (as if I would start cheating now), Bubba pulled back onto the road and disappeared into the distance. As I continued on in the 93 degree heat, managing 7 mph into the wind, with 50 miles to go before the next town, watching the highway van pull away, I began to understand what Allison means when she describes me as stubborn. Oh well.
I caught up to Ian and Maggie at the top of a long and deceptively steep hill. We paused for a few minutes to complain about the desolate landscape and constant wind. When we got tired of whining, we got back on the road and pedaled through some rock formations as we approached another spur of the Rockies.
I stopped at a campground and convinced the owner to open his store for me so I could buy some Gatorade. As I sat there drinking, I saw Maggie and Ian ride right past without seeing the store. I bought another Gatorade, strapped it onto my rear rack and hurried to catch them. After delivering the beverage, we pedaled further into the hills, and we finally reached Lander.
We set up at the city park, where I met Carl and Eddie, who are riding the Great Parks North Route. I also found Bubba, who was feeling a lot better after a long nap. It turned out that he had to ride for a few miles before the truck stopped to help him. He was talking to Willem, a 19-year old Dutchman who had been staying in the park for 3 days. When Bubba asked him where the showers were, Willem said he hadn't gone yet. Bubba and I exchanged glances, then I made my excuses and went to set up my tent.
We all went to a local pizza joint for dinner, and I convinced Ian to share some pitchers of Zonker Stout. Jim, the engineer from North Carolina, was starting to grate on a few people with his strange conversation tactics. Jim tells jokes like every engineer I know -- in a monotonous tone with very little detail or sense of delivery. What makes this really weird is that Jim likes to tells jokes that have absolutely nothing to do with what we are talking about. The jokes really aren't that funny, either. Here's an example. In the middle of a conversation about European beer, Jim interrupts and says "You know why ducks have flat feet? To put out forest fires. You know why elephants have flat feet? To put out flaming ducks."
If anyone older than 6 finds that joke funny, or if anyone can explain to me how it relates to our conversation, please email me. So anyway, Ian and I are plowing through the stout, and after a while Ian starts to get a little drunk, and he begins to light into Jim a bit. After every joke Jim told, Ian would look at him and say "Is that it?" and then laugh uproariously. That was kinda cool.
Then we converted one of my waterproof panniers into a makeshift ice chest, loaded up on BEvERages, and retired to the park. We have all decided to take the next day off and have a huge barbeque (the park has some huge grills). Without any concerns about getting up early the next morning, we all stayed up late. The conversation lasted well into the night (despite Jim's jokes) until we began drifting off to our individual tents for the night.