Friday June 16 – Day 27 – Rawlins, WY

Today was a half day – 35 miles and into Rawlins. Most was on pavement, but with a lot of sharp ups and downs that made it tough to get into a rhythm. But I made it by 11:30 – just in time to hit up the Pizza Hut pizza buffet. I ate until it hurt, then waited until I had a little bit of room and ate some more. Then when I went looking for a hotel room I had to walk the bike – I was so stuffed that there would have been a pizza on the sidewalk had I tried to ride.

Surprisingly enough, all of the hotels with vaguely respectable names (like Quality Inn – is that even vaguely respectable?) were about $80. The RV parks were 4 miles away on the other side of town, and I wanted to get out of the wind, so eventually I ended up at this place called the Key Inn -- $40 flat for the room. But no ESPN, so I had to watch my World Cup en espanol. This Key Inn was quite the place – the sign said no vacancy, the fellow who gave me the key came out from the back room at 1 PM with rumpled hair and a white T-shirt with holes in it, and this (very nice) woman who looked like she had danced around a pole from time to time in the past was cleaning the rooms. May God bless cheap motels and the USA.

Also – I stopped at Murray’s, this little bike shop in town, and tried to work on my hand problems. I’ve been having some numbness since Steamboat. I got a new pair of gloves, although they didn’t have any good ones, and wrapped some rubber from busted tubes around my bar ends. Hopefully that will help.

Day 27 stats:

35 miles
1500 feet up (all little risers)
40 antelope (from the forest line)