After four days and 294 miles of riding, it was time for some rest. I felt tired, but I could also tell I needed a day off also because of my heart rate. First thing in the morning, my resting heart rate is about 48. Today it was 60. While riding, on a hard effort up a steep hill I can get my heart rate up into the 170’s pretty easily. Today, the gentle rises caused me to work harder, but they’re not like the canyons of Salt Lake City or the mountain passes I saw a few days ago. These gentle rises raised my heart rate only to about the mid-140’s. Not because they were that gentle, but because I was too tired and it hurt too much to make it go any higher. Anybody who has done some training with a heart rate monitor will be familiar with this effect. When you’re over-trained, you find that your heart doesn’t respond as quickly and the heart rate doesn’t go as high as it normally does on hard efforts. A hard effort when you’re in this situation causes an all-over, general kind of body ache. At least it does for me.

On our rest day, we did the usual rest day things. Laundry, a little grocery shopping, see the sights of Clayton, take a look at maps for the route in the next week, and some bike maintenance. There have been no problems with the bike — all I needed to do is lube the chain a bit.

Late yesterday afternoon, I also had a bout a 40 minute interview with a reporter from the Union County Leader. It never ceases to amaze me what can happen when you simply walk in the front door of a newspaper and introduce yourself. The secret, of course, is having a story to tell.

I know you all read the Union County Leader like it was the New York Times, so you should know that the story won’t be in this week’s issue. You’ll have to wait until next week’s issue. Sorry.

Boy, can the wind blow around here. Pretty much a steady 20-25 with gusts to 40 miles per hour. It was actually kind of scary for me. It was scary because this time it was blowing out of the west, but next time, it could just as easily blow out of the east.

In the evening, the winds let up, and boy what a pleasant evening it was. So calm and quiet. Way in the distance, you could hear the whistle of a train as it approached. As we sat on the porch of the small cabin we were staying in, it felt like a scene out of “Little House on the Prairie”.

But, now that the wind had died down, there was something else. A mild, but unpleasant smell of some kind. I smelled it when the winds let up and all through the night. To be perfectly honest, I thought it smelled like someone’s septic tank was venting nearby, but I wasn’t sure what it was or where it was coming from. Maybe I should have known what it was. I grew up in St. Peter, Minnesota, a small, mostly farming town in south central Minnesota. Pat, who grew up in Glen Ellyn, a suburb of Chicago, knew immediately what it was — cattle. Did I mention there’s a few cattle ranches in this area? Maybe having the wind blow around here isn’t so bad after all.

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