Day 21: Beautiful Badlands

102.57 mi max 33.5 mph 7:08.28 avg 14.3

If you have been following any of the other blogs out there (go to the ALA's website for the complete list), most of them will tell you about how difficult today's conditions were: extreme heat, rolling hills that seemed to be more hills and less rolling, and a headwind to rival the Gillette day. I will tell you, though, that today might possibly have been the best day of my entire life...but I'm getting ahead of myself.

The ride began uneventfully, although the bank thermometers read 76 F...at 6:30 am. There was a newspaper gal out taking our pictures, so we all had to dress purty in our Big Ride jerseys. I'm not very good at wearing shirts with sleeves when it is hot out - as you can see in most of my pictures, I prefer tank tops (and besides, there's no better time to work on the tan on my shoulders). By 7:30, the Big Ride jersey was packed safely in my bag. I didn't even have to get off my bike to remove it, which was a new challenge: changing outfits while riding a bike. For the record, it's much easier in a car with cruise control.

For a little while, I was riding on a train with Dom, Kim, & Norm, but when Nature called, I answered instead of trying to stick with the group. After that, I was pretty much on my own for the rest of the day. I did see a lot of people, though, mostly because we were all leapfrogging each other as we approached the Badlands.

The first set of Badlands was pretty cool, with little plateaus interspersed with grasslands, and small peaks, maybe 50-100 ft high, jutting up from nowhere...kind of like miniature mountains that had just been spit onto the prairie. Although the Badlands were "cool", that was actually when the temperature started to rise. By the time we reached the "official" park entrance, the temperature had soared to well over 110 - some people said 114 - but I won't argue with anyone who says it was hotter. The air seared my throat and the gusts felt like blasts from a furnace.

When I turned onto the I-90 Frontage Rd., I'd begun to develop one of my famous heat headaches (which can be immobilizing), so I gobbled up a prescription strength dose of Vitamin I. I knew that I should have stopped at the gas station, but I pressed on, hoping to catch up to two riders that I'd met up with as we climbed up through the Badlands, hoping that they might be able to pull me into camp. Perhaps 5 miles along this frontage road, Mark had set up his rest stop and he waited for us with a soaking wet towel. After that ride up through the park and then across the burning plains, that towel was the best thing in the the whole world. When it was passed on to the next incoming rider, the wind evaporated the water from my skin, and I might have even gotten a goosebump or two.

Something clicked in me after I left Mark's rest stop. I figured out how to do hills...I stood up on my bike, and, for the first time in my life, really and truly climbed. I'd seen other people do it - but the few times I'd tried it, my bike felt unsteady and I didn't understand what I needed to do to make the gears work. People had asked me why I never stood, but I never had a really good reason. Perhaps the muscles in my legs were finally ready to make that leap. I passed a whole bunch of people, and stayed in front of them for a long time - I'd suddenly made this exciting breakthrough!

For many people, the heat, hills & high wind were too much, and they sagged into camp...it's always an option, especially when you consider that we'll be biking a couple hundred miles in the next few days. I kept my focus off the difficult conditions by inventing alternate lyrics (a lot like when we had nasty headwinds on the CRC - yeah Crew 2 Paddlers & Black Socks!). Remember that cool towel? I'd tanked up at the rest stop, and discovered that I could recreate the towel by taking in mouthfuls of water and aiming them at various parts of my body...the headwind did the rest for me.

Our camp was in Sudoku? Kudzu? Kadoka? South Dakota somewhere. The important part was that several of us decided to get a room to avoid the oppressive heat. Christy was one of the people who stayed in a room - she's had some of the worst luck with her bike...in three weeks, she's suffered through 12!!!!! flats, and today, her derailleur met with failure. She is one of the sweetest, most patient people I have ever met - she exudes a warmth that is so genuine...and her bike is truly testing her on her patience threshold. Hopefully, her bike will start to behave!

In the past, I've done a couple of 3-day bike tours in Maine. At least one of those days each time, it has poured. Many riders were miserable. I made it through by deciding to be a duck...ducks like water, I was a duck, so I liked water. It was a process of transmutation. During my ride today, I thought about the things I do: biking through heat waves all the way across the country, taking solo backpacking trips in the dead of winter, whitewater kayaking in spring run-off. It became clear to me that I am actually like one of those little bugs that can survive only in the most adverse of conditions, whether it's at the lip of a volcano or on the snowfields in Antarctica - I think biologists call them extremophiles. That's got to be the only explanation!

(Oh, yeah, and don't forget to check out the World's Largest Prairie Dog the next time you are visiting South Dakota. If you don't think you'll make it, I took a picture).