The Answer My Friend

Today was the third day in a row we were moving on our bikes for about 5 hours and 10 minutes . Two days ago and yesterday we rode for 5 hours and 8 minutes. Today we rode for 5 hours and 9 minutes. I guess our endurance is getting better.

Remember how yesterday I said our strong legs and a little tailwind helped us average over 18MPH? Well today we had a rather strong headwind (15 to 20 MPH) that prevented our legs from using their full potential. We averaged under 10 MPH. Today started out with us planning on leaving at 7:00 AM but sunrise wasn't until 6:45 AM (we forgot we changed time zones) and we had to delay the start until 7:30 AM. Thom asked if he should wear his long gloves, and I said "No." I was wrong. After about 10 miles we called Claudia and asked her to come bring warmer clothes. When she arrived we put our long riding bibs over our short bibs, an extra top or two, caps and long full finger gloves. 

While we were warmer we weren't any faster. It was just a tough headwind. We met Claudia for lunch in Stratford (about mile 30) and decided we would try and make Texhoma, Oklahoma which was another 20 miles away. Remember yesterday I said we were hoping to zip through Oklahoma today. I would say we barely made it to OK. 

We did see some real Texas Longhorns.

And yes we did make it to Oklahoma.

This is our 5th state.

Here is the ride on Strava:

Do you think we went pretty straight?

PROGRESS

Today there are two different ways to view our progress. First you have the handy dandy little table.

You can see that we now have over 100 hours of moving time on the ride.

For those of you who prefer to see on a map where we are, we had these two models pose for this picture:

If you expand the picture you can see Texhoma written on the water tower.

Comments

We had two people comment about us only having a Clifbar for lunch the last two days. Neither Thom nor I are diabetics even though we are raising money for the American Diabetes Association. HINT HINT HINT (Let me know if you need a link to make a donation.)  Even though we are careful we don't need to be as careful as diabetics. Both of us make it a practice to have Clif bloks every 5 miles. As the ride progresses or if we are going particularly slow we may have a Blok more often. We do everything we can to avoid bonking which is when you have depleted all of your energy reserves. So far we have been successful in avoiding bonking

As an aside, I have familial or essential tremors. My hand shaking is exacerbated by caffeine. Some of the energy Bloks have caffeine in them to give you a jolt while you are exercising. Sometimes the effect of the caffeine on the tremors is there the next morning. It is quite humorous to watch me eat scrambled eggs. My family understands that one.

Some of you have wondered how we are sleeping. I can't say my sleeping habits have changed at all due to the riding. I am a 70 year old guy if you know what that means. 

Tomorrow 

We hope to make it to Liberal, KS tomorrow. We are actually staying there tonight, so Claudia will have to drive us back to Texhoma in the morning. For the next three days the weather calls for winds from the east (Boo!) and a chance of rain. We will see how that affects the ride.

Finally

Even before we crossed the border into Oklahoma, Thom and I had named the wind Maria. Aren't we clever?

BTW The Answer My Friend is Blowin In The Wind!