Day 60: Bad Hills + Bad Wind + Bad Tire + Bad Decisions = BAD DAY

Lewiston, ID to Dayton, WA

Stats!
Miles biked today: 69.3 long, difficult miles
Total miles biked on trip: 2143.0
Max speed: 31.0 mph
# of hours we rode today: 12

Today I woke up feeling a little bit sick, and the weather was dreary. Dean suggested taking another rest day, but I said we'd have to climb that last mountain sometime, so it might as well be today. I had a bagel to try to settle my stomach, and off we rode.

Because we knew it was a long way to our lunch stop, and up a mountain at that, we stopped at the grocery store to pick up some snacks and gatorade for the day. It was a good idea.

The first 10 miles were great, and beautiful. We rode alongside the Snake River. It was a gray day, but you could still see the hills reflected in the water.

We soon hit Alpowa mountain, however, and things turned south. It wasn't a particularly hard climb, in terms of how steep it was -- no worse than Lolo, anyway -- but I was still feeling a little sick, and it made the climb very challenging for me. And, in fairness, we started at about 500 ft. and climbed to about 2800 ft., so it was a pretty tough ride. We had to stop and rest a lot and I got dizzy a few times. We walked some of it. It was so hard that we discussed stopping for the day at Pomeroy, the town where we planned to have lunch.

We finally climbed the mountain, and Pomeroy was about 9 miles away. Those 9 miles were pretty great, after an arduous ride up, but it was very windy, which slowed down our otherwise gleeful descent. The clouds broke up, too, and the sun came out.

In Pomeroy, we stopped at the first place we saw to eat, and got a lot of food (as per usual). We talked about whether or not to stop there, and looked at the map. It was mostly downhill or flat for most of the rest of the way, except for another pretty big climb (about 1,000 ft.) right before Dayton. There were no towns in between. We decided to go for it.

As soon as we got on the road, we noticed that the wind had gotten worse. Much worse. But it was still mostly downhill, and we just pedalled through it. The wind got so bad that we had to stop for a break a few miles out of Pomeroy -- it's exhausting to fight the wind! Dean checked his phone and saw that it was after 4 p.m. already!! I was shocked, thinking it would be around 1 p.m. We took a long time on that mountain!

Once again we discussed staying in Pomeroy. We could just turn back, get a motel, and be done with the day. We checked the weather and saw that winds would be light tomorrow. It was already close to our normal quitting time. But I could see in Dean's eyes (or thought I could) that he wanted to press on, and I really didn't want to go 4 miles back up the hill to Pomeroy, so I said I thought we should keep going.

TERRIBLE DECISION!!

The wind didn't calm down for the entire flat/downhill portion, so we never got a break. We had to fight for every inch. There wasn't much shoulder, either, and we had a few close calls with cars.

We were hungry and tired, and we ate our entire package of Pepperidge Farm cookies and drank most of our gatorade. Not rationing = terrible decision #2.

The long ascent at the end of our trip started earlier than we expected (based on our elevation maps). We went up and up and up and up. Once again, I needed a lot of breaks and to walk. Dean could have biked the whole thing faster and with no breaks at all, but he was super patient with me, and I really appreciated it!

We both were having problems rationing our water, and came close to running completely out a few times. I think we were both thirsty a lot throughout the day, but we didn't want to drink our fill and have nothing left. We were, after all, already out of cookies to keep our sugar (and mood) up.

Just as the sun was setting, my tire went flat. This was my first flat of the trip. Of course it happened today, when we had less than 10 miles left after a hard slog. Oh, well. Dean fixed the flat for me, but it took a really long time. He's getting to be a pro at fixing his own flats, and can do it really quickly, but my tires proved to be more of a challenge. I can't change a flat to save my life -- it requires way too much physical strength -- so I was grateful he was there to help.

While Dean was fixing the flat, the sun really started to sink fast. We had a decent break while the tube was being changed, and it was dark and we were tired and grouchy, and I just became determined to get to Dayton as fast as I could. I put everything I had into it, and didn't stop once from the time of the flat until we reached the (very fancy) hotel.

This was especially challenging because we could see the top of the big hill from the flat-changing site, and were anxious to get over it and make the descent into town, a few miles down. Psych! We had about half a mile of downhill, followed by an even steeper uphill to a new peak. Oh, LORDY.

But I really wanted to just *get there*, and Dean did too and I wanted to stop slowing him down so much, so we powered through to Dayton with our headlights now on because it got so dark. It was also FREEZING on that downhill! But we made it to town, stopped at the first hotel we saw (fancy, as I previously mentioned, so that's nice), and found the only place still open and serving food.

We are now well fed, have a roof over our heads, and are completely exhausted. I think we might actually take a rest day tomorrow, just to recover from this one rough day.