After a great night of sleep I started the ride in the morning. The wind seemed to be coming out of the northwest and I was headed east for some of the day and then southeast for another portion of the day. The weather channel hadn't lied about their projection for the temperature because it was in the low 70's and was very comfortable riding in shorts and a jersey. I had a couple of rolling hills for about 5 miles and then it was over. I haven't seen this much flat land in a long time. I think the last time I saw this much flat land in front and all around me was when I was in Nebraska some two months ago. The wind was crucial to making my ride a good ride or a bad ride and today it seemed to be making it a fairly good ride. I was moving right along and all around me was farm land. It seemed like there were a lot of tractors and cattle in the fields. After about 40 miles into the ride I pulled over at a very nice rest stop and enjoyed lunch. I was there for about a half hour and then was back on the road to put in some more miles. With the wind blowing directly behind me at this point, since I was now going south east, I was flying. I was averaging around 20 mph with the wind directly behind me and nothing was in front of me to slow me down. My day continued with the flat land, great weather, perfect roads, and the wind at my back. Then I was about 85 miles into the ride and I had just reached Texas. I figured I was doing great for time since it was only 5 pm and I still had two hours of sunlight, at least, before getting to the next town, 20 miles away. Well, in Texas I had been warned about the roads and now I was able to experience their roadwork. The idea of a road seemed to be, throw down some gravel and then plaster it to the road. I had seen it before and all that it really meant was that I couldn't go nearly as fast as I was going before. I had to also get up off of my seat about every 30 seconds because you don't want to have to ride over every bump on the gravel for very long. Then after a couple of seconds in the state I read another sign that told me I was in the Central Time Zone. I had just lost an hour in no time and I was going to have to start pedalling a little harder to make it to the next town before the sun went down. I was feeling fairly good in my legs since I hadn't had to do very much so far throughout the day, and I started to muscle myself across the gross terrain. I hoped that the roads wouldn't be like this the entire way through Texas because it was really annoying and really bothersome to my rear end. I continued forward and with it now being 7:15 pm, I made it into town. I still had a couple of minutes of daylight and asked the first person I saw where the nearest park was located. I was only a couple of blocks away and so I started to pedal to the park so that I could set up tent. I set up tent and it seemed like the wind was starting to pick up and the temperature was dropping significantly as well. It was still okay to be outside with the weather, but it seemed very cold for such a lower elevation that I was now at. After making a pot full of pasta I went into my sleeping bag and listened to the wind howling around me.Daily mileage: 104.4 miles
Average speed: 13.8 mph
Total mileage: 4,964.5 miles
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