Aug/090
Day 45 – Stupidly Long – 130.8 miles
This morning we got out about 8, just as the staff were arriving – before they could charge us.
the day started with another Continental Divide race. I won this one standings are: 2-1-0. we were going pretty hard the whole way up it – 18mph most of the way!
We stopped at 33 miles at a grotty cafe for breakfast. It wasn’t too bad.
the next continental divide was a lot closer than we thought – less than a mile up the road. Cal saw it coming first and won it pretty comfortably – 2-2-0.
At the top of the hill we met a Manc called Matt riding alone. His parents were out for a couple of weeks sight seeing so they were taking his panniers for him this week – Lucky Bast*rd. We rode with him for a bit but we planned to stop 60 miles short of where he was going to so he pushed on.
We stopped at split rock for some…interesting photos then headed onto Jeffrey City – Our planned destination.
We had heard mixed review of Jeffrey City all we knew for sure was that it was a ghost town. An old Uranium mine closed just down the road so the population fell from 5000 to 50!
We got there to find that the Mancunian family had kicked the door to the toilet down and the owner of the towns only restaurant wasn’t in a very happy mood! We ate lunch there with her moaning about the foreigners and how she could barely understand their accents. Not sure if she realised we were within earshot or not!
The waitress from the restaurant only had one eye, which i have no problem with normally but this was starting to look like the beginning of a horror film!
The local Madman – a potter from across the road offered us to camp in his ‘garden’. We headed over to his place – an old petrol station complete with Exxon sign and pumps! He gave us a Whisky each and told us to make ourselves at home. He was a genuinely nice guy but very odd!
Also staying at his place were 2 guys from Belgium touring on Segways. They had tried to get sponsored by Segway as one of the guys is disabled and uses them to get around all the time but Segway insisted this would not fit with their image! As far as I know hardly anyone knows what a Segway is so any advertisement would help wouldn’t it? Anyway the guys were more than happy to demonstrate the Segways to us and let us have a go.
We decided then that we were feeling OK and with nothing much else to do we would ride the next 58 miles to Lander. We had heard it was a very nice city co on our bikes we hopped!
We didn’t really know what time sunset was and we got caught out in the dark a little! We did get some awesome sunset views of the mountains though so it was worth risking life and limb!
We rolled into town at 9.30pm and went to the only restaurant still open – Tony’s Pizza. This place was a gem! We had the best pizza I have ever tasted!
We also met Matt and his parents in this restaurant. He told us where we would be camping – yet again pitching in the dark! When we got to the campsite/city park it was brilliant. One of the best campsites we had been to and it was completely free!
We got to bed pretty late ~ 11.30pm but decided that tomorrow we would have a day off after today’s stupidity!