Day 10 – Heat and Hello Nebraska
The final night in Colorado was thankfully uneventful. The storms abated. The wind blew a little, but mostly it was calm. The only trouble occurred at 4am when the sprinklers kicked on. At first I thought another intense rain storm had found us, due to the amount of water that was entering the tent. I popped my head out and saw myself completely surrounded by sprinklers. Rather than face the gauntlet of sprinklers in my skivvies while dragging a fully loaded tent I wished for the best and zipped the rain fly door closed. It would have been perfect had it not been for me inside out rain fly. I must have but the fly on inside out when I set the tent up the night before, and so the rain started to drip through the zipper and the vent on the other side. I rolled over and went to sleep. It was not worth fixing and I was only going to sleep for another 1 ½ to 2 hours anyway. I can do that wet.
The ride today was grueling. It was 108 at our hottest reading (that’s at speed with the wind cooling us a little). In addition this was also our longest day yet, we pushed through for 102 miles today.
The three notable milestones are entering my third state! The second is the Central Time Zone. Both Matt and I had forgotten/momentarily lapsed that we’d soon be gaining an hour of sleep. Although Matt was curious why it kept getting lighter earlier. We easily lose track of things like this. Time and distance take on a new dimension at the speed of a bicycle. 
The third and final isn’t so pleasant, the first crash. We were pulling into the town Palisades, NE, in search of some cool air and refreshments, which is usually in the shape of a grocery store. As I turned the left hand corner I saw a large swath of what looked like wet pavement, but wet pavement happens all the time so I didn’t think much of it. As I entered the turn my tires slipped out from under me without hesitation! I hit the pavement and started sliding jamming my wrist in the process, and removing bits and pieces of the flesh from my shin.
In the end nothing major was broken. My ego was a little bruised; I slightly tore a bag and had some minor injuries. 
Not too bad for an accident.
We picked up and headed into town. We were searching around for our relief when a gentleman gave us a quick tour. He pointed out the restaurant, directly in front of us. The grocery, across the street, and the location for “a good spot to cool off and have a beer.” Not normally being much of a drinker it’s amazing how good a cold beer has been tasting at the end of these days. We walked over with him to the American Legion. We wheeled our bikes in and sat down. We talked a bit about our ride, cooled off, drank a beer, asked about the town, about what the four guys do, filled out water bottles, and then headed down the road. We had another 29 miles and the sun wasn’t going to wait.
These next 11 miles proved to be the hardest. My method of using half of my water to soak my clothes was becoming less effective as our constant 20 mph headwind started to dissipate and the humidity climbed. Thereby leaving me wet and hot. Not until out last 10 miles did the temperature begin to drop. When it did we kicked up the tempo a notch and burned through the last bit at a racer’s pace finally arriving at the free McCook, NE, City Park. Complete with showers, water, electricity and camping! All from the good people of McCook, Nebraska.
