My Mama Said There Would Be Days Like This!

Speaking of mothers, my mother always said "If you can't say anything nice about someone/something, don't say anything at all"! Being the obedient one of her three daughters, I shall obey and I'm not going to say a thing about waking up to howling winds, and starting a 50 mile ride in misty rain, winds, cloud cover that looked like fog and hills that had a 17% grade and a bike that was doing some "phantom shifting". Here is a look at the van at the 25 mile mark...no one was appreciating the above mentioned items that I won't be talking about, any more than I was. You can tell this by the number of bikes on top the van and on the front carrier. I was very inclined to climb aboard and have my bike delivered to a bike shop for repairs.....but on second thought I decided I'd go for it!

In the town of Medina (25 mile mark), I decided to sit for a spell and just enjoy the little town. We stopped at the apple store, which specialized in everything "apple" - duh! Apple cookies, apple ice cream. apple coffee, etc. Me,. I settled for a huge chocolate chip cookie. While I'm sitting here for a spell, let me tell you that today was a good reminder for me that 80% of biking is mental....I wasn't up for the ride this a.m.....but thanks to biking buds like Katie and Kirby, in no time at all I was happy to be back in the saddle again.

This pic was taken from the top looking down the hill. Our guides call this hill a "long pull", meaning it goes on forever (like 1-3 miles), but not real steep (that's their opinion). I believe this one was a 13% incline. They had told us after this "long pull", several miles down the road would be a "short steep" (killer but over in maybe 1/2 mile), followed by another "long pull". Of course they conveniently forgot to mention that the last long pull had a 17% grade.

Isn't this pristine....can only imagine how it would look on a sunny day. We think it used to be a stone quarry.

Home, home on the range...in my rain gear of course! We passed many such places, all equally as tranquil.

Can you see the long horns? Note how green the grass is.

At the top of our last long pull, we were relaxing when up comes these three motorcycle dudes! They had the nerve to say wasn't that hill something? Actually, the guy w/o the vest is Kirby's husband, and the other two are his brothers. They had flew to San Antonio, rented cycles and planned on meeting Kirby this evening...but came upon us on the road. We had about 14 miles left to go, with maybe five of them being downhill with hairpin turns that actually turned out to be quite fun. Of course the cycles went on ahead of us and an hour later we arrived! Note, the sun finally came out and the rain blew away.

As soon as I arrived in Kerrville (32,000), I went to the bike store and was devastated when they said the Forever Flyer would have to spend the night with them so the gears could be worked on. The Forever Flyer has slept in my hotel room for a month now and it is rather lonely here w/o her.

Tomorrow is a day of rest....Yeah!

Couldn't resist these baby lambs....The Lord is my Shepherd...I shall not want.

Be sure to read the previous post for yesterday as I just posted it today!