First flat of the tour!

So I was hoping to be able to go the whole tour without getting a flat, but at about mile 10 on Wednesday (between Gooding and Burley, ID) I broke my streak – I was playing around with my phone while riding and apparently something punctured my sidewall. Currently the total number of flats is somewhere around 200+ between all riders, with roughly 30 who are still yet to get their first flat.

The rest of the day was really good though – it started with a tour of a dairy farm which is run by a friend of my small group leader, Lou Haveman. It was quite the operation – they have 1,700 head that they milk three times a day, and they had a rotating device in the milking barn that holds 50 cows at a time. From there we arrived in Twin Falls, and were provided lunch by a local Reformed Church. The next stop of the day took us on a very small detour to visit Shoshone Falls just outside of town. The falls are higher than Niagara Falls, but less volume I think. Even with the short climb to get back out of the canyon we descended to see the falls, it was very much worth the detour – actually, I went back down the hill to do it again because I wasn’t satisfied with the length of the climb. We followed the canyon for a good part of the day and had a few good opportunities to look out into it.


At the end of the day I was pretty exhausted though – I think all the time I’ve spent in the sun because of the lolly-gagging I’ve been doing lately finally got to me. So I decided to strap on the aero bars and give myself a real workout to regain some energy (I know that sounds bass-ackwards, but it works!). So this morning I slept in till nearly 7am as usual and slowly gathered myself together before heading to a local diner for coffee around 8:30am. The sweep team joined Slime-bucket Bill and I for a while, and I finally got on the road around 9:30am. After loosening up the legs in the first ten miles I felt pretty good and decided to time trial and see how fast I could complete the day. This was an 86 mile route with about 3000ft of climbing, and there were only two small towns between Burley and Snowville (we crossed into Utah today, yeah!) so I wasn’t really missing out on any sightseeing. I helped Joanna up the second hill of the day since she was struggling when I got to her, but after that I didn’t slow down for anything except a couple short water stops. My total ride time was just over 4hours with a final average speed of 20.7mph. This was also with a good headwind for 10miles and a cross-wind for 20. I could feel myself getting stronger over the past couple weeks, but I definitely surprised even myself today!

The town we’re staying in tonight, Snowville, UT, apparently has a population of 171, so we are approximately doubling their size! We’re staying in a good sized park, but we had to rig up our own shower system since they don’t have a public one – it consists of a couple blue tarps tied up at the backstop of a baseball field with a cold water hose suspended from above. The temperature was shocking at first, but it certainly speeded up the process of community showers!

Rumour has it that tomorrow we’ll be staying in a state park in Willard that has a lake and a beautiful beach… I hope it’s true!