Day 19-Wheatland

126 Miles! One-hundred and twenty-six miles! 126 Miles! The longest day of our trip is now behind us and I feel great. We woke up at 5 AM as usual well rested from a day off in Casper and ready to tackle what seemed to be a daunting mileage to cover in one day. At circle up I was fortunate enough to be assigned sweep; not exactly the best day on the trip to be sweep but I politely grabbed my orange vest and found a group to ride with for the day. We departed from the high school around 6 AM and headed in the direction the crew told us to go. No more than 4 miles into our ride we were chased down by a crew vehicle and told to turn around and take a different turn, while the rest of the crew chased down the lead pace lines who missed the turn. Once found the pace lines were racked and taken back to the correct turn, unfortunately this is where our bad luck began.

Did I mention it was 126 miles?

A crew van with three bikes on the back rack, one of which was already in pretty rough shape from a wreck into Casper, lost its back rack over a speed bump with all three bikes attached. The total damage was two totaled full carbon bikes and a badly damaged Masi bike.

The rest of the lines continued on our very very long ride and stopped for lunch about 60 miles in, where we learned the full extent of the damage. The guys will be up and riding in the next few days, but its unfortunate they had to miss today’s epic ride.

One disadvantage of being a sweep is not being able to pass anyone in front of you, so we stopped several times throughout the day for flats and had to wait for pace lines ahead of us at every crew stop.

SWEEPS!!!

Even though today was tough, long, and unfortunate circumstances kept several members off the bike, it was a great day and everyone was in high spirits! We averaged about 19 MPH today, over 125.9 miles; not to shabby if you ask me.

After a very long day we had a fantastic dinner prepared for us by local cattle women where we gorged ourselves on delicious brisket, fresh fruit and vegetables, and a whole spread of desserts.