Day 16, Monday, September 23

Today I got up, ate, got my bike ready, rode, cleaned my bike, ate, got ready for the next day, and slept. No, wait a minute, that's yesterday's report. Here's today's report: I got up, ate, got my bike ready, rode, cleaned my bike, ate, got ready for the next day, and slept. No, wait, that's a report from some day last week. Here's today's real report: I got up, ate....

Just kidding. Although I do feel a little like I'm developing a repetitive strain injury of the brain. I'm not the first to make this comparison, but it really does feel like the movie "Groundhog Day" with Bill Murray. Every day is a little different but no matter what happens I still wake up and have to do it all over again. I think I'm just in a little bit of a rut. I feel like I need to watch "Lethal Weapon 3" with exploding toilets or something just for a few hours break from this riding-my-bike-across-the-country-for-nearly-a-whole-month thing.

Actually a lot did happen today, even though it was another short day. I had several good laughs in the morning. First, at breakfast, for the second morning in a row, Tom from Minnesota kidded me about always hitting the road fifteen minutes before breakfast is over. On longer days the extra edge helps me a lot, especially if I want to pick up on any drafting opportunities that roll by. On these past two shorter days I didn't want to adjust my routine and take the chance of messing up my rhythm for the longer days coming up.

Tom mocks me for the second morning in a row, this time without James as backup.

Tom suggested that I string a set of beer cans together across the parking lot exit so that I would be alerted when the first cyclists left and be ready to give chase. That made me laugh pretty hard. I took a picture of him making fun of me, as I did yesterday, to document the event for the Web site. Then he started to threaten to get his lawyer wife to sue me for libel if I wrote anything slanderous about him on my Web site that might stop his patients from visiting him. That made me laugh even harder. Eventually he went back up to his room and I tried to hover around my bicycle at a discrete distance, waiting for the first riders to take off so I could follow, but he noticed me from the balcony and started making mocking gestures long distance. I wasn't fast enough to get a photo of him that time, though.

Larry from Davis, California, was the oldest rider on the trip and a true inspiration. I can't imagine doing the ride without him and Bob.

I had my next good laugh when Larry, Bob, and E. took wrong turns in front of me twice and I had to call them back onto the route. The first time they crossed a set of railroad tracks then turned left, heading north on highway 151. That didn't seem right to me so I looked at the route sheet and it clearly said DO NOT turn left on 151 north after the tracks but head straight on 151 south. Larry is normally an excellent navigator but today he was having an off day. After setting them straight I told them that there were no more turns until after the next rest stop, which was in about fifteen miles.

Bob, Larry, and E. on the road

Back on the road they got a little a head of me again and after a few miles I watched as they turned right to stay on 151. Again, I looked at the route sheet and it clearly said to stay straight to go onto highway 222 and DO NOT turn right to stay on 151. Both times the route sheet explicately said not to do exactly what they did, so clearly they weren't even looking at it. By this time they were about a quarter to a half mile away. I yelled as loudly as I have ever yelled in my life, "STOP! WRONG WAY!" I almost thought that they were playing a prank on me, as a test of character to see if I were a nice enough person to go chasing after them. Fortunately it was a short day and I would have had enough leg strength to chase them down, but if it had been a long day and they hadn't heard me, I think I would have had to let them go and figure it out for themselves.

They did hear me, though, and by the time they caught up to me I was laughing so hard, seeing them go down the wrong way twice in a row like that, that I couldn't even pedal my bike and had to coast for a while. I tried to control myself, though, because it isn't much fun laughing alone and they weren't laughing nearly as much as I was. "Better get a grip on yourself," Bob even warned, "or I'll bring up Amarillo again." Amarillo is where I accidentally stopped to take a photo of the "gentlemen's club" sign and it nearly made Bob bust a gut.

My next laugh came before the first rest stop. I was ahead of Bob, Larry and E at that point. I had just passed a house with two unfenced dogs in the yard. I heard them chasing me, but so far on the trip most of the dogs have barked and chased when they first saw me, but retreated when I passed by. I heard the distinctive click of eight sets of claws as the dogs got closer. At first I was going down hill and it wasn't so bad, but then I started going up and the dogs had more leverage on me. These dogs didn't sound like they were slowing down any, and I was contemplating starting sprinting soon. Just then the happy threesome caught up with me and scared the dogs away. E. was laughing, saying that he wished he'd gotten a picture of the dogs chasing me and of him riding up with his water bottles un-holstered, ready to squirt the dogs. I told him that I hadn't been too worried because I hadn't met any very determined dogs yet, but E. said these dogs were "running with intent", so I was glad that E. and the others caught up to me.

Dogs "running with intent" colored the rest of my afternoon until lunch. They always seemed to chase me in pairs. Once I aimed my bike straight for a pair who were coming toward me, pedalling out of the saddle as hard as I could trying to scare them. That made them back away for a while, until I passed and they started chasing me from behind. I out-sprinted them, with my quads burning, only to be picked up by the pair at the next house, making me immediately sprint again.

As much as I like dogs, I don't like being chased by aggressive dogs, and I was a little annoyed that people didn't keep them fenced. Then I rounded a bend and saw what looked like a scared, helpless, abandoned puppy sitting alone in a ditch. All I could really see was that it didn't have a collar, and since it didn't chase me I assumed it was "homeless" and didn't have any territory to defend. It seemed to perk up a little bit that I noticed it, but I didn't think there was anything I could do for it, especially since I had already tried to get Susan to take the puppy begging at a lunch stop somewhere in New Mexico and she -- rightfully -- wasn't interested.

I felt sad about the puppy and made myself think again of Bob, Larry, and E. getting lost in the morning to cheer myself up. Then I saw a dead, road-kill puppy in the road and that made me mad. Ever since we crossed into Oklahoma, we've been seeing cemetary after cemetary, with immaculately polished tombstones covered lavishly with giant bouquets of multi-colored flowers. Judging by the contrast in treatment of dogs and graves, people in Arkansas seem to value dead members of their own species more than living creatures of other species. Even if you don't believe that other species of animals have emotions, they do have nervous systems, and it seems like so much suffering could be avoided if people just kept their animals fenced and got them fixed.

I was feeling pretty flustered from all of the dog events by the time I got to lunch. Also, I needed to take a bathroom break but hadn't seen a good place to pull over so had been waiting since before the previous rest stop, for about thirty-five miles. I guess it's kind of naive in retrospect, but I had thought that we would have at least port-a-potties for facilities on the ride. It just hadn't occurred to me that you could get forty-five people across the country peeing in bushes for 3,000 miles.

Off to the side of the lunch stop, I saw a row of bushes where I thought I could relieve myself discretely. I turned right down a road to head for the bushes instead of pulling straight into lunch, and a bunch of people at the stop started yelling at me, "Sarah! Lunch is up here!" I thought I could just keep heading for the bushes and once they saw what I was doing they'd figure it out. But a bunch of cars, then an ambulance with its siren going, crossed in front of me and I had to wait for them to pass. All the while about fifteen people were staring at me trying to get me to turn into lunch. Once the ambulance passed they started yelling again, "Sarah! Up here! Lunch!"

Between needing to pee for thirty-five mi, feeling sad and angry about the dogs, and being embarrassed and frustrated by the current communication situation -- not to mention fifteen previous days of back-to-back riding and being in Arkansas, for crying out loud -- I was about ready to blow a gasket. At the top of my lungs, nearly as loudly as I had yelled to Bob, Larry, and E in the morning that they were going the wrong way, I yelled, "I'M TRYING. TO TAKE. A LEAK!!!!!" I have to say that making loud public announcements about my bodily functions was a new experience for me.

I thought that would quiet people down, but they still didn't hear me. Crew member Steve was still explaining that I could go that way but I was about to skip lunch. I gave up on the bushes, rode up to the lunch stop, and explained that I had been trying to explain that I was trying to take a leak. I'm not really sure how he responded. It was really nice of everyone to be so concerned that I not miss lunch, it just wasn't what I needed at the time. I ate lunch with a full bladder, then made use of the bushes that I had been aiming for earlier before I got back on my bike. If there's a special "I'm trying to take a leak" hand signal for cyclists, I'll be sure to learn it before my next cross-country trip.

The rest of the ride was uneventful and pleasant. I rode casually with Charles, E, and Troy for a while and chatted. It was nice to have the company after the tumultuous morning. Last night I ate a lot of food but ate it early and went to bed hungry, so tonight I got way too much food and will probably only eat half. I got two foot-long veggie sandwiches from Subway, two scoops of Mrs. Fields mint chocolate chip ice cream, and two bottles of juice. I shopped for dinner at the food court of a large, indoor shopping mall across the street and at a gas station, which is not my normal routine, but as Charles says, it's amazing how much your habits change on a ride like this.

Tomorrow is 130 miles with 500' of climbing, a slightly easier-than-average PAC Tour day (an average day has 120 miles and about 3,350 feet of climbing). We had a head wind today and yesterday that was just strong enough to be annoying. If it keeps up again tomorrow I'll be back in shameless-wheel-sucking mode.