We woke to more rain. I was not looking forward to another day of riding in the cold and rain. I had two choices: go back to sleep and hope the weather improves or get up, get going, and get it over with. The weather forecast showed a higher chance of rain in the afternoon, so I decided to get going. That turned out to be a very wise choice.

As I headed out of town, it was cloudy and cold, but not as cold as the days I rode with my friend Larry a while ago. It was also not raining and I was in a good mood from the simple pleasure of being dry. That mood helped get me through a 2500 foot climb from Kamiah, Idaho to the Camas Prairie.

It continued to be cloudy all morning. By the time I reached Winchester, Idaho (about 45 miles into the ride), it looked like maybe the sun would come out. At Winchester, I left the busy highway 95 behind me for a while and got onto Winchester Road which was a delightful road for a number of reasons. First, there was very little traffic on it. Second, there was a 10 mile segment of this road that descended about 2000 feet and has to be one of the most fun 10 mile sections of road for cycling. It was a winding road with beautiful vistas of the valley to the north and west below. There were short stretches through forested recesses, but mostly it was through grasslands which gave you clear view of the road up ahead so you could tell when there was traffic coming. Except there wasn’t any traffic. I only saw one car on the entire descent and he turned onto the road behind me and then couldn’t negotiate the corners as quickly as I could. He pulled up to the stop sign at the bottom of the descent about a minute after I arrived. I think he appreciated the thrill of doing that descent on a bicycle because he gave me a wave and a smile as he went by.

I shot some video during the early sections of this descent. It doesn’t really capture the experience of descending Winchester Road, but it’s the best I can do. If you’re a cyclist, I would highly recommend a trip to Lewiston to experience this one firsthand. Going up Winchester Road would be a sufferfest, but the reward of going down would be well worth it.

I arrived in Lewiston still not having had any rain fall on me. I was so relieved to not have to dry out after the ride. It wasn’t more than an hour after I arrived though that the rain started to fall. Boy, lucky I got an early start.

Total distance:	80.99 miles
Time:	7:36:49
Average speed:	10.6 mph
Maximum speed:	38.5 mph
Total calories:	5612
Average heart rate:	113 bpm
Maximum heart rate:	148 bpm
Total ascent:	5484 feet
Total descent:	5580 feet
Ride profile:	(click on image to view a larger version)
Ride comments: The day started out cloudy and cool. It looked like it was going to rain, but it stayed dry all day. A bit of wind developed about mid-morning, but it wasn’t slowing me much because I was already going pretty slow — I’m pretty tired from yesterday’s ride.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 20th, 2006 at 7:46 am and is filed under The Dream Tour, Bicycling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.