I Lied.......

...... when I said "it's all downhill from here" a few days ago. Yesterday's headwinds knocked the stuffing out of me a little bit and my legs were still pretty empty when I woke up this morning. Oh well, nothing to do but get back on the bike and see how far they take me. In fact they took me all the way to the beautiful Indian Lodge in Davis Mountains State Park (picture below). We started the day as soon as the sun rose above the distant hills and rode most of the first 40 miles on I-10. I have a love/hate relationship with the interstate. The grades are gentle and the shoulders are generally wide and well paved. But - lots of truck noise and lots of shredded tire debris. I spend so much time looking down to avoid it that I seem not to do much sightseeing. Luck was with us today and we had a tailwind and net downhill for the interstate portion. As soon as we turned on to a quieter road we lost just about all traffic but picked up a headwind (again!) and started riding on a chip seal surface which is not very pleasant. Apparently it is the paving method of choice for secondary roads in Texas so we'll see a lot of it for the next few weeks. The combination slowed us right down and it felt like the 10 miles to lunch were an eternity. Since we saw no civilization today our guides had parked the van and trailer at about the 50 mile mark and served up a wonderful lunch. I noticed that my rear tire was soft and it turned out that some steel wires from the tire debris on the interstate had indeed found a new home in my rear tire. Call it a rookie mistake, but after I pulled the first one out I forgot to check the rest of the tire and 10 minutes after changing the first flat it was soft again. Thank you to Carol (one of our guides) and kind-hearted Mel for sensing my frustration and doing the second change for me. Then we were off again. At about 62 miles, after having already climbed over 2500 feet we started climbing in earnest and gained another 2000 feet over 15 miles. At the end of that 15 miles was the McDonald Observatory which is associated with the University of Texas at Austin. Since I was there anyway and I had time before dinner, I toured the visitor centre and then rode up another 400 feet to visit one of the large telescopes. Then it was pretty much downhill (on yucky chip seal) to our beautiful lodge and wonderful buffet dinner provided by the lodge. We're in the wilderness of a state park set amongst lovely rolling hills. The sky was incredible tonight - full moon and oodles of stars.

Stats for the day: 93 miles/150 km and 5170 feet of climbing. Not bad for waking up with the tanks on empty :) Thank goodness for the rest day tomorrow. I think we're done with the colder weather now. The day started out a bit cool today, but warmed up nicely by noon and once we lose some of this altitude I anticipate that the heat will become a bit of an issue. In spite of day after day of sunshine there is not much in the way of tan lines for me yet. I'm still taking grief about my lily-white skin (like that's never happened before :)) Not much time for pictures today, but there are a few below.