And then there were two.

So this is the end of day six, I’m in the same location. We went Belknap to Terrebonne, and Terrebonne to Redmond.

I knew that Kevin needed to take a rest day tomorrow, so I asked the other rider, Steve, who was just riding to the edge of Oregon with us, what that would do to his schedule. He has a proper job, and a limited amount of vacation.

He informed us this morning that he was going to end his ride. Today was his last day with us, which is pretty sad. He’s been struggling with some knee pain.

This is the first time he’s done a bicycle tour like this. He was just honest about it, and told us that it wasn’t actually fun for him. And I mean, unless you’re crazy, it’s not. I am crazy that way. I really do think it’s fun.

So that’s the sad news.

Today was really tough. We started out on the path that we were supposed to go, and it turned out to be closed.

We got seven miles up into this canyon, and after a thousand feet of climbing, we saw the ‘Road Closed’ sign. Fortunately, a forest ranger came by and we got to talking to her. She asked us where we were going, and when we told her ‘over the pass,’ she said, ‘no you’re not.’
They’re still clearing ten feet of snow.

That meant we had to backtrack, which is never fun. The more unfortunate thing is the re-route took us on a really busy, narrow highway with 5000 feet of climbing.

That’s a lot of climbing in a day for anybody, but it took me into the mountains and I’m a mountain boy, so it was a really good day for me.

I continue to ride really strong. I’m physically doing well. Mentally, things are a little bit harder.

Tomorrow we’ll take a rest day, so we’ll recover a bit and carry on.

I hope you’re enjoying getting these updates.