The pudding really did sound like a good idea. I'd just intended to stop at the store in Fairfield to check email. But then a V8 sounded good and then we decided to fill up our water. It was just bad luck that I walked by the Jell-O display.
The day before (Day 28) we'd stopped at the Tollgate Cafe on Hwy 20. We'd had a good pull up the grade and an iced tea sounded really nice. After getting to talking with the lady who owned the cafe, we ended up having a piece of chocolate pie, it was fucking excellent. We left with visions of pie dancing around in our heads. As the miles wore on the thought faded, when we woke up this morning (Day 29) it had been completely forgotten.
Staring at the Jell-O display, the pie idea came rushing back to me and I snatched up a box of pudding, some milk, cookies, and a tub of cool whip. Outside it only took a little persuading to convince Brad that we should go find some shade and make that pie.
The cook pot was still seasoned with corn pasta and alfredo sauce from the night before and beans and rice from the night before that but we didn't mind. The pudding set up quickly but we couldn't wait, we got at the Cool Whip with the cookies. I was already starting to feel a bit queasy before we started in on the pudding/pie mix, but out of some sense of duty or maybe honor we tried to finish the whole thing. It was tough, but we ate it all. Getting moving again was painful, while we'd been sitting in the shade the day had been heating up.
I'm sure there are a bunch of lessons to be learned here. You're not going to ride well with only the nutritional equililavent of sugar covered styrofoam in your stomache... Two hour breaks in the late morning when it's still relativly cool is a bad idea, same break at 14:00 when it's hot, no problem... Take small breaks and keep moving... And so on, I just remember how tough it was riding out of town only wanting to drink water and lie in a shady spot.
Coming up on the lava fields that make up Craters of the Moon National Monument made for a strange afternoon. The soil went from flat farm land to six foot piles of dark black rock with only lichen and the occasional sagebrush growing on it. It looked like there'd been a fire. I was glad I wasn't taking a bro (Mt.) bike or, even worse, a covered wagon across it. Impassible is the only word I can think of for it.
The campgrounds in the park were nice but the $10 fee was a bit much for us not having a car and them not having showers. Our neighbor, Dick Collins, was one of those talkative types that you can't walk away from. The seventy-year-old guy had a couple thousand stories, from his childhood in Michigan to his five years in the Air Force to the German tourists he'd met last week, and he could go from one to the next with no visible seam.
He kept us up after 24:00 describing his entire family and their relationships, telling us about running the boom on B-29 refuler, Texas cathouses, and his love of Jonathan Swift and calling CSPAN.
andrew
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