Day 29 Gee Brief: Go West Young Man!!!

July 19th - Saturday
Rapid City, SD to Spearfish, SD

Get Ready! Get Set!  Whooaaa!!!!

The Road Boss put the kibosh on our early morning start today. We were up by 4:08/am (8 minute snooze at the 4/am alarm), and ready to go by 5/am ish. She then came in from loading the truck and declared, "You're not going anywhere."

Despite my protests that a little lightning never hurt anyone, she would have none of it. I even did a google search on, "Is it safe to cycle during lightning?". No dice. Even google agreed with her. I am of course in complete agreement with her, but I can't admit that. It sounds much better to say, "I PERSONALLY was good to go, but the Boss said no." rather than say, "I'm a wimp and lightning storms scare the crap out of me." Marriage is an awesome institution.

Helmet Cam Test Pic

Also, I finally put my helmet cam ON my helmet! I got the darn thing in Fulton, NY, but for me, figuring out how to attach it to my helmet was very close to a mystical experience. As of this moment, I'm still not sure that I did it the RIGHT way, but it definitely will not fall off. The next challenge was figuring out how to make it work. Fortunately that was far simpler than mounting it to my helmet. It has two buttons. Push one button and it takes a still pick. The camera vibrates to let me know that the pic has been taken. For videos, I slide the other button/switch forward to start and backward to stop. Again, the thing vibrates at each point to let me know it has started or stopped. I could have cropped the test pic to show only me, but that would have pointed out the fact that I still have a little more weight to lose in my stomach despite cycling almost every day for almost a full month now.

I think the camera is designed for big scenic vistas, and for hands free videos while cycling. This is cool. If it works, then I will no longer need to do any one handed video shots of crossing bridges and going down hills. Actually, I haven't done ANY one handed videos of going down hills. Doing that would be right up there with cycling while it's lightning-ing. I've had some AWESOME downhill runs so far that would have been cool to share with you via video. I'm sure there will be a few more "hills" as Brandon called them to share with you!
Side note: I know lightning-ing isn't a formal word, but people SAY it all the time.

I'm writing this in real time, and it looks like the storm has cleared. The Road Boss just fell back asleep, so I'm going to sneak out right now and start my day.

What happened later on.....
There are may reasons to cross the country on a bicycle. Some do it to raise awareness for a cause. As you know from my other posts, I believe that cycling across the country mainly raises awareness of.....uhh...CYCLING ACROSS THE COUNTRY!!
Some do it as a bucket list thing, others call it "A Cycling Dream Come True".

Of all the reasons I've heard, NO ONE has ever told me, "I cycled across the country to get a new truck." This is one of the WORSE reasons I can think of to cycle cross country...EVER. It is for this reason that I had my former mechanic check out my truck from top to bottom to make sure that it would make it "there and back". As it turns out, the Dakota made it .....well to Dakota, and then gave up.

Technically, it was still running and could POSSIBLY have made it. However, don't tell J this, but the MINUTE that she called me up saying the transmission was acting up again, this little voice inside my head started jumping up and down saying, "New truck! New truck!!" I had no clue that voices in your head could actually jump up and down, but they did.

So, once we decided that J would nurse the Dakota to Spearfish, I got on the phone and called EVERY possible transmission place I could find in the Spearfish area.  The "new truck!" voice inside my head became stronger as I discovered that NO ONE would see us that day (Saturday). This meant we would have to wait until Monday. The kicker was, even if we repaired the transmission we would then be putting MORE money into a product that was becoming less and less reliable.

So we went to Juneks in Spearfish to, as the owner put it, "see if they had anything that would work for us." They had a fair amount of options to choose from, but in the end, we were both happy with Spearfish (the name we christened our new truck).  As a matter of fact, I think she likes it so much that I may be driving her Honda Civic to work for a while.

The first truck we looked at (above), and J's reaction to it (right)

The truck we actually bought (left)  and J's reaction to it. (below)

So the title for this entry, that I wrote at 7/am on July 19th ended up being prophetic for the entire day. It started out with a delay due to lightning transmissions, then ended up with a delay due to a sluggish transmission. Go figure!

Ps. Both the above pics of J were taken while I was outside a cafe and she was sitting inside. The window reflection ended up putting her literally inside my torso. The whole thing was an accident, but turned out to be a metaphor for our marriage!

Pss. The older truck that you see above was sitting in the street of the last town I encountered before I climbed the mountain to Big Horn National Forest.

Psss. You'll have to wait for my Day 32 entry entitled, "What an Awful, Scary, Perilous Horrifying Experience!" (Amore, Text , July 2014)

Pssss. I know I'm behind in my daily entries, but you'll just have to wait....I've got a little cycling to do!