Hello all,
Thought everyone could use another update on the travels of Nate, Harly, Danny, and myself. Well, the last few days have gone well despite the afternoon thundershowers that hunt us down like rabid sprinklers. I am not sure where Nate's last email left off so I may be repeating a few things. We made it through Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Park without losing limbs to bears or those vicious moose and elk. By the 4th of July we had made our way to Dubois, Wyoming where we witnessed a brilliant fireworks display that battled with Mother Nature's own display of lightning and pouring rain. With this brilliant display also comes the sad result of a soaking wet tent. I am now fairly certatin, and I believe that my fellow travelers will agree with me on this, that a wet tent and resultantly wet sleeping bag are one of the most horrible problems with camping. We coasted down out of the mountains and into the Wyoming I know from postcards and jokes concerning low population and a lack of shade.
We have been riding more miles of late usually averaging between 80 and 90 miles per day. I am worried that we are becoming too accustomed to riding. Nate mentioned yesterday that it just seemed normal to get up at 6:00 and spend countless hours on a seat the size of a sandwich. One interesting town of note is Jeffery City, which according to Danny could easily be the setting for a low budget post-apocolyptic movie. A very nice older couple offered to buy us a motel room in Jeffery city and we politely accepted though wary of the eerie Bates Hotel feeling the place gave off. We made it through the night without being maimed or killed by whatever biker-hating psycho would obviously reside in this little ghost town motel and set off of Rawlins on July 7th, my birthday. I believe that the reason Nate could pry himself away from the keyboard for a few seconds to let me write to this group is simply out of guilt knowing that my one birthday wish was to write this email... okay- I lied. I had other birthday wishes, but Nate saw fit to let me have this one. Harly gifted me a pair of ripped biking gloves he found along side the road, Danny gave me the third tape in a book on tape set he found along side the road, and Nate gave me a personalized cake with my name misspelled and several bones frosted onto the cake to match the nickname they gave me due to some rapid weight loss. Not a bad birthday. I have already started perusing the roadsides for a gift for Harly's birthday on the 26th.
After our wind-filled trip to Rawlins we rode 22 more miles to Wilcott, Wyoming population:gas station. Wyoming seems to have a habit of naming any occupied building alongside any road a town. A appreciate the need for lots of dots on Wyoming maps to create the illusion of occupancy, but I would still have to argue that a Shell station does not constitute a town. We camped in a field last night just off of Highway 30 where we weathered a storm and amazingly found a spot without trees where we could camp in the company of friendly cowpies and tumbleweeds. We will be in Colorado tomorrow where we will rendezvous with Jan Swinton and other Swinton family members- a date Nate has been looking forward to for some time. Almost a month through the trip we have discovered only a few new things about each other- it is impossible to determine who in our group smells until we can see first hand the faces of convienience store clerks, falling off of your bike is a occurance for only Nate Swinton and Myself, beards are not for everyone ( though I still think patchy should be closely associated with sexy), and we like riding bikes next to large speeding vehicles-who knew? We should be dipping our tires by August 9th.
I'll send Nate to a computer soon to talk about the next few days.
Take care,
Daniel Meade and other bicycle-shorted company