Day 4: Highmore to Huron

I've been thinking all day about how to start this entry. I think someone already used, "It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.", but that gets pretty close. I guess if I'm staying with the theme idea, I would say today's theme was rain.

Wags and I went to bed last night knowing that we were in for quite a day. We arose at 5:00 and were just about to leave the hotel when another group of riders informed us that they were going to wait for a couple hours before leaving to see if the Easterly head wind (yes, I did say Easterly, which is highly unusual for SD in June, or anytime for that matter) would either die down a bit or change. We thought that sounded like a good idea, but unfortunately our hotel room door had already closed and our keys were inside. The decision was made.

We grabbed an orange juice across the highway, where we confirmed with the highway patrol that our day was pretty much going to suck. We also ran into some of the SAG drivers who were already making plans for bus rentals, and had received requests to SAG from Highmore! Of course, that is not an option, you have to get out and try.

We set out. Straight into the wind. Again. Will the weather ever cooperate during this ride? About 6 miles out, the rain started. It rained fiercely and the wind drove the rain right into our faces, at times stinging pretty sharply. We made it to Ree Heights and immediately took up an offer for a ride into Miller. Yes, we SAGed. We're not proud of it, but there is no way we could have ridden the 12 miles into Miller in the very windy, very rainy, very chilly weather. We were beat.

We stayed in the school gym in Miller for 2 hours trying to warm up and dry out, along with about 200 other wet and cold riders. Finally the rain stopped and we made the painful decision to press on. The wind was still blowing, but the temp had raised by at least 15 degrees, so we were pretty happy. After a stop at Wessington, we rode South for 7 miles and noticed that the wind had turned 180 degrees and was now straight out of the West. We looked forward to our left turn 7 miles ahead, as this would give us the first real tail wind of the entire trip! Unfortunately, during this leg, Wags bike suffered 2 flat tires. He replaced the tube to fix the first one, and we managed to patch the second just before our left turn.

The turn. As soon as we turned and felt the tail wind, I remembered what keeps a biker going. A tail wind of 20 MPH gives the biker peace. We rode and we rode. We averaged around 18 MPH for the 25 miles left into Huron. Did you notice we haven't mentioned anything about food yet? We noticed too. None of the rest areas during today's route had any food of any substance at all. Wessington had trail mix and baked goodies and that was it. The people seemed shocked that we would want a meal while riding. I'm not really sure what that was all about. Maybe a lack of communication on the part of the Argus Leader, maybe the weather caused towns people to change their plans. We don't know. What we do know is the difficulty of riding 65 miles increases immensely when you have eaten only trail mix and orange juice all day.

We made it Huron on fumes, but feeling pretty good due to the tail wind. Once we checked in to our hotel, we pedaled post haste to the Taco Johns 1 mile down the road and consumed our daily calories right then and there. It was good. Huron has a nice shuttle system for us, and we utilized it to find a restaurant/bar with wi-fi access, which is where I write this. And yes, I'm eating again ;)

Tomorrow's route takes us to Brookings, 88 miles down the road. All indications point to a tail wind all day. Things are looking up.

See you all Friday, and you can look for our final post (form the road anyway) tomorrow evening.

Kyle and Wags.