Today’s Themes: A 92-mile day and crawfish! In order to ride
across the country in 52 days, we need the occasional long mileage day. Today
was it. I was riding at sunrise, 6:45 am. It was a beautiful crystal clear
morning. The humidity was gone (The dew point was 53 this morning as compared to 71 yesterday morning -- for those of you who understand dew point.); a perfect day for riding 92 miles. I love
riding Big Blue; 60 – 70 mile days are
great! The added mileage to 92 has to be done. I just ground it out. I am very tired right now. My legs know they have worked hard and put in a full day.
We rode by crawfish farms/rice farms. I guess that is what they are
called. I don’t know how it all works. Here's the short version that I found.
 | Grow a rice crop in water from March to July. |
 | Seed crawfish in the rice field in June. |
 | Drain water and harvest the rice in late July/August. |
 | Re-flood the old rice field and it becomes a crawfish pond in September/October. |
 | Harvest the crawfish from November to July. |
 | Drain, plow, and level the field to repeat the process in July to March. |
Bike stats: 92.1 miles ridden in 6 hours and 17 minutes of
actual biking, averaging 14.7 mph with a maximum speed of 24 mph. It was really
flat today. If you divide 92 miles into 825 feet of elevation gain, you get
just under 9 feet per mile of elevation gain. That is VERY little, virtually
insignificant.
Highlights:
- Successfully biking 92 miles. I'm tired, but feeling great!
- Seeing crawfish and rice farms.
- Seeing a crop duster plane flying over and dusting rice fields.
- Again intersecting with the Union Pacific railroad. I love trains!
- Staying a second night in a hotel room, a Holiday Inn Express. The view out my window is terrible, but only having to share the shower with one other person who will bike today at 13 mph and hasn't arrived at our room yet. (It's 4:30 pm right now.) I get to jump right in the shower when I finish my day biking.
Crawfish farm. Look at the sky. It was a beautiful day to ride.
Rice field. It began to cloud up and get more humid in the afternoon when I took this.
Crop duster plane working on a rice field. I took this picture just before lunch.
The Union Pacific Railroad train waiting to begin travel. Trains often have to wait for freight trains down the line to clear the tracks before they can proceed ahead.
The view from my 3rd floor Holiday Inn Express hotel room. It's all a tradeoff. It is wonderful to sleep in a real bed versus on an air mattress in my tent. I love sleeping in my tent, don't get me wrong, but the occasional night in a real bed is wonderful. This is the second night in a row in a hotel. The campground views are always much better.
Make it a great day!
John
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