DAY 42

April 25, 1999

Flood watch for today through Monday. Man, that sucks! At 9:30am it was 53 degrees with west winds @10mph, and raining! I had the best continental breakfast so far. They had fresh fruit, waffles, six kinds of cereal, biscuits, gravy, bread, bagels, muffins, orange juice, apple juice, and grapefruit juice. I had 1 biscuit (no gravy), and 1 of each of the juices. Then I was off, into a crappy day!

I stopped at the same store I’d visited yesterday to buy my Gatorade and the same girl was behind the counter. She told me about a guy that biked through there last year. She said he was a real jerk to her boyfriend (the one that works at the Super 8 Motel.) Apparently, this cyclist was expecting a free room and got a bit angry when her boyfriend said he couldn’t give him one. She also said the guy was writing a book and was going to name it something like "Jokes and Spokes." I thought it was pretty bold of someone to expect a free motel room and then to act like a jerk when someone doesn’t give him one.

Heading north on 56/77 I was in rain with the wind blowing west all the way to Florence. When I reached Florence, I decided to end my day early. I was miserable and cold. It was not a fun day!

The guy at the small, cheap looking motel, called "The Holiday Motel," gave me a $2.00 discount and charged me $28.00. After paying, I walked to my room and opened the door. Doh! There’s some guy inside lying on the bed watching TV. I apologized and told him a mistake had been made at the front desk. He just made a stupid noise, "umm hmm" and looked at me like I was some sort of idiot. This was the second time I was given an occupied room. The first time was in W. Helena, but I was fortunate that the person in that room was gone. Finally, in a room, I relaxed in a tub of hot water. Afterwards I was going to take a short nap. Well, 2.5 hours later I woke up from some crazy dream. This dream had me cycling with a severe GI upset causing a lot of gas. What a strange dream indeed!! If only I could harness that energy to propel me forward.  :-)

After getting up, I washed my rank water bottles. There was stuff growing inside and around the cap. Man, those things sure did stink…Whew!

Today - 33.25 miles
Total - 2130  miles
Avg. Speed - 11.0mph

 

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