I slept like a rock last night. We planned to be up earlier than we ended up getting up, but that's ok. Joe and I had some special K with strawberries for breakfast- I think I may have a new favorite kind of cereal. It was delicious. As we were packing up this morning, Kurt, Trish and Allen were too. They were getting ready to go to a running race in Alamagordo, which was about an hour away. At first they were debating whether or not to go because of the rain, but for the most part, the rain was heading off to the north. It was the kind of rain that came in sheets. The duration wasn't very long, but it just came pouring down when it arrived. One spurt of this happened while we were getting ready to go. At that point, I was really dreading getting on the bike today. Luckily for us though, the rainclouds were moving in the right direction so that most of the day should be pretty dry. When it was time go get on the road, it was still raining, but was more of a light drizzle at the tail end of the main rain clouds, so it wasn't bad. We made it about 50 feet from the driveway when we noticed that my back tire had gone flat. At that point we figured it was probably because of a wire from a truck tire. Those have a way of causing such a slow leak that you don't notice it's flat until the next morning. But then again, it could just be a little low. So, since it was raining, we turned right back around and went under Kurt and Trish's car port. Not sure if it was a full blown flat or not, we just pumped up the tire and got on the road. It seemed to hold very well, at least we would get a few miles in. On the way out of town, we stopped at Wal-Mart to get a bag of our favorite frozen pasta veggie meal. By the time I had gotten back out of the store, the tire had lost some air. At that point we knew that the tube did indeed have a hole in it somewhere. So, Joey worked his magic again and fixed my flat for me. I'm so lucky to have my own mechanic (I'd be there for over an hour getting that tire changed if I had to do it). Luckily for us, while I was in the store, the rain had also stopped. We were very excited about that. About 6 miles out of town, we turned onto a "back road" that had no shoulder, but also almost no traffic. It was very peaceful to say the least. For most of the day, we had a headwind, so we couldn't go nearly as fast as we would have liked. On this back country road, we got chased by every dog on the road (and at least half of the houses have dogs!). All of the dogs were friendly and just thought we looked like a fun thing to chase, but it still got tiring trying to outrun them. It really bothers me that their owners don't have someway to keep them in the yard, ie an invisible fence, or something. It would absolutely crush me if I saw a dog get hit by one of these crazy drivers. We passed through a couple really tiny towns as we traveled along. After quite a while, we made it to the town of Rison. By that time we were very ready for lunch. The road crossed over a set of railroad tracks and then curved around through the town. We were happy to find a nice little park with picnic tables to eat our lunch at. Today, we were having some mac and cheese, our old faithful meal. As we were sitting there getting our lunch cooking, a truck pulled up. The man inside walked over and asked where we were traveling to/from/etc. He sat right down at our picnic table with us and chatted for quite a while. It was so nice that he checked in to make sure everything was good and that we didn't need anything. He was the sheriff there, but was off duty. He told us that he had seen us riding earlier and was curious as to where we were going. There are so many really nice people here in this whole central region of the US, it was the same when we were in Iowa early in the trip. I don't know what it is about this section, but the people are just so much more friendly. After our mac and cheese, we ate the last little baggie of the jam cookies that grammy had sent to us. I have no idea how they made it this far, but they did. I think part of it had to do with it being so cold there for a while. We didn't do anything but get our tent set up and get in our sleeping bags. There was no time outside in that cold to be getting anything extra out- even if it was food. Anyways, it was a great treat to keep us going today. As we left town, we continued on in the headwind. Despite the wind, today was a wonderful day because it had gotten up to 73 degrees today!!! We haven't seen temperatures like that in quite a while. No pants or jackets required, we were riding in just our jerseys and shorts- how wonderful! The only bad part is that everyone we've talked to today said that they get very worried when the temperature gets this warm at this time of year. They said that when this type of thing happens, they start worrying about tornadoes! Now that just made me VERY uneasy, especially since we knew there was supposed to be a thunder storm with 100% chance of rain tonight. We had high hopes for making it to the town of Monticello tonight, but that wind was just wearing us down. After a few hours of riding after lunch, we ended up stopping at a little church out in the country. It had a HUGE carport that would definitely keep us dry. It wasn't quite our usual stopping time, but we were both ready to be done. My body was feeling sore for some reason, and Joey was ready to be done for the day too (probably from fighting the wind). He is usually always ready to keep going, so I was surprised he was ready to stop. I think he was also worried about the rain, and it did seem like it could rain at any moment. So, there we were in the big car port. It's kind of amazing because the majority of the homes, and quite a lot of churches, have these car ports, and no garage. Guess if it is usually warm, there is no need for a garage. We had plenty of time to sit outside without having to freeze our buts off. It was spectacular to just sit there in the warm weather. I made a couple little bicycles and typed for a while. For dinner we had some hot chocolate in our bowls and then our frozen pasta meal. We got a chance to talk to some family and friends back home and simply relax. A little while after it had gotten dark, a truck pulled into the driveway of the church. We saw a beam from a flashlight and then saw a man. It was the town sheriff dressed in his regular clothes with a "Sheriff" baseball cap on. Someone had called him because they saw us at the church and weren't sure what we were doing there. When he saw us he asked if we were camping, which we obviously were. Then after seeing our bikes asked us all about where we had traveled. He had no problem with us being there at all and completely understood why we wanted to be under the carport. He was a very nice guy. I'm glad that he stopped by so that someone like him knew we were there and why. The rain had not yet started when we went to bed, but we knew that it was on its way. We rode 57.54 miles today and made it to the "town" of Rye.
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