Ponca, NE to Lake
View, IA
109 miles (115 if you stop at Wal-Mart in South Sioux City)
"That ought to do me for another half mile or so." [Deb Klein, after a short stop to eat]
"If we don't make a turn soon, we're in deep doo-doo." [Mark Bazerman, headed east, into the wind]
Today was the hardest ride I have been on, ever. The combination of headwinds (nearly constant and fairly strong), distance, and more rolling hills than you would expect for Iowa was close to deadly. Close enough that if I had taken a van ride earlier in the trip, I would have taken another today. Close enough that I didn't lock my bike at lunch, thinking that having it stolen would be a pretty good excuse to stop riding.
Time for sleep.
Early in the ride, still in Nebraska, before the wind got so bad:
We leave Nebraska for Iowa:
Various pictures of Iowa, when I needed an excuse to stop riding:
