Every day is an adventure on the road. Team “Stop A Lot” was planning to take it easy today. Yesterday we did 100 miles. We were feeling fine but a bit of wear and tear was showing. So we had planed to just ride the 38 miles to Burley at a leisurely pace until we heard there was going to be a parade in the neighboring town of Hansen. Hansen was a total of 9 miles off our route. Hey, what’s nine miles in the larger scheme of things?

We rode up to Fred Meyers and bought patriotic costume attire and dressed for the occasion. You’ll have to see the pictures to really understand but to make a long story short, everywhere we rode people honked the horns on their cars in celebration of the 4th of July. We attracted a lot of attention.

We rode off on a side road on our way to Hansen to view Twin Falls. (See Pictures) We took pictures and were on our way. We met up with other riders at a gas station just outside of town. Jennifer had already ridden into town and spoken to the parade organizer and she was delighted to have us in their town parade. Other riders rode into the gas station as well. There were about 13 riders at this time and 5 or 6 others arrived later. One rider had purchased candy for us to toss to the children along the parade route. I took many photos so I’ll let them tell the rest of the story. It was small town America at its best. Everyone was so friendly and pleasant and wished us well on our journey across America.

Then all 18 of us headed back to our route and moved on toward Burley, but not without some antics along the way. We had a tail wind and we were moving along at about 26 miles an hour. I rode ahead to take pictures of the thoroughbreds, the fast riders, since they were only cruising at about 27 miles an hour. I took a few pictures, see the gallery of photos, and by now Dan and Steve had moved up to the group. I worked my way up to Tim and Cathy, who are very strong riders, and we all started to little by little, push the pace higher and higher. This stretched us all into one long pace line because no one wanted to work any harder than they had to. Cathy was leading with Tim right behind, followed by many others and me. When Cathy started to tire, she rotated out to her left and fell back into line behind Tim. Tim took it up another notch and now we were moving at about 30-31 miles and hour. I knew I should really be next in the rotation, so after Tim had taken it for a while I moved up and ahead of him so he could get a rest. I took us up to about 32 mph. Now I need to tell you, nothing is as exciting as seeing 12-14 riders, single file in tight formation, ripping down the highway. I had used up all of my gears. We were flying!

Up ahead was a stop sign, so we slowed the whole line down and nearly stopped to be sure we made a safe crossing. We did, and I resumed an aggressive pace and headed up a long hill. I soon tired and was sucking air so I moved to my left and let Tim take it, and Tim continued to blast up the hill with Cathy sucking his rear tire. I fell in behind Dan, gasping for air, and Dan quickly sat up and declared he couldn’t take this anymore. I was glad to hear that and sat up to recover. Tim and Cathy rode on over the horizon to the next SAG stop, a couple of miles up the road. What a blast! When we all arrived at the SAG we replayed the entire event.

After the SAG stop we rode in a double pace line nearly all the way to Burley. We were parallel to I 84. Truckers were continually honking their horns at us to celebrate the 4th of July and our patriotic attire.

What a day! Did we ever think it was going to be this way? Every day is an adventure.

Well, I have to oil my chain in preparation for a long ride tomorrow. Can you believe it; I have been gone nearly two weeks? Be safe and good night!

Click here to see more pictures from today!