July 7 Riverton to Casper, Wyoming

I’ve been thinking about sage brush today.  It’s hard not to think about sage brush in Wyoming.  Most of us would claim to be smarter than sage brush.  So, here’s a conundrum. How come sage brush can do photosynthesis and we can’t?  Photosynthesis combines water and sunlight to create energy. The only waste product is oxygen. Meanwhile, we’re debating the merits of nuclear energy, shale oil, hydro-fracking, and so on.  If we could master photosynthesis, we would have all the energy we could possibly need.  I mean, how hard can it be?  Sage brush can do it.

The earth and sky in Wyoming are so huge that I’ve run out of superlatives.  Some of the grasslands we cycled through looked more like oceans than land — trackless waves of grass blowing gently in the wind.  Getting lost in the grasslands would be similar to being stranded in a lifeboat in the ocean.  There are no features to navigate on; you could only plot your location from the stars.  Since the bigness of the land is overwhelming, I started to look for small things instead.  I soon found hundreds of cactus — no more than a foot tall — that were sending out their flowers. Lovely but virtually invisible in the Wyoming wilderness.

Wyoming is so wide open that there are very few places that can accommodate a crew as big as ours. Between Riverton and Casper, Hiland is one of the big towns.  The Hiland road sign claims a population of 10 but I think it’s an exaggeration. Since there’s no place to stop, we had to go all the way to Casper — a total of 120 miles. We started early — I was on the road by 5:45 — to take advantage of the cool, dry, still air. Generally we were lucky with the wind; it rarely blew directly into our faces.  Still we were all pretty well cooked by the time we got to Casper.

Today’s ride included several milestones:

• Longest ride (1) — I’ve never pedaled so far in a single day
• Longest ride (2) — it’s the longest ride of our tour.  The next longest ride is a mere 117 miles in South Dakota.
• Back-to-back — it’s the first time I’ve ridden centuries (100 miles or more) two days in a row

Day’s distance: 120.2 miles (193.4 km)
Average speed: 16.3 mph (26.2 kph)
Day’s climb: 2,660 feet (810.7 meters)
Total distance: 1,394.1 miles (2,243.6 km)