Day 17: Hardin to Casper

243 miles

As much as I love my bivvy, there’s nothing like a good cowboy camp. It was refreshing to wake up and feel the wind on all sides of me. It was still dark out when I woke up. Today is the first day of my sleep schedule adjustment process. As I mentioned, once I get into Mexico, I want to be waking up before the sun rises and setting up camp as the sun sets. I’ve been riding until about 10 PM every night. As I get closer to the equator, the sun will set at seven, and eventually even six. When I get to see Ciudad Acuña, my border crossing into Mexico, the sun will be setting at seven which means I need to move my wake up time back three hours to adjust my end time that is also set back by three hours. Since I’m currently waking up at six, that means I need to be waking up at around three. I typically consider myself a morning person. I love to wake up for the sunrise, but 3 o’clock is really early. That’s going to take some serious getting used to. I actually think the hard part is going to be falling asleep at 7:30 or eight every night. Setting an alarm for three and just getting myself out of the sleeping bag isn’t that hard.

I would like to have ridden for a couple hours before stopping, but I was out of water, so I had to stop in Hardin, just 10 miles from where I had camped. From Hardin I go on interstate 90 E, and begin my day in earnest. With strong headwinds again in the afternoon I knew I had to get most of my miles done in the morning before the headwinds ground me to a crippling halt in the afternoon. After passing Little Bighorn Battlefield, the interstate left the Bighorn River and began rolling over consistent hills. I quickly racked up several thousand feet of elevation gain by the time the sun was blazing overhead.  My warm nights come at the cost of hot days. by 10 o’clock it was above 80° and by the time I got to Sheridan it was 90. While the heat didn’t affect me too much, I did have to make sure I was drinking a lot of fluids. More than the actual heat, the sun was absolutely baking me under its rays. I’d been pretty tan when I arrived in Alaska, but after five days spent in Prudhoe Bay, and then two weeks of cycling in the cold, my tan had all, but disappeared. In the last three days I’ve accumulated quite a sunburn. Every day I’ve overapplied sunscreen until I can’t rub it anymore. My arms and face are caked in white sunscreen and I reapply throughout the day, But it just isn’t enough. The streaks of caked on sunscreen on my arms do little to veil the red skin below. As if someone was tasked with painting a red barn white with just one bucket of paint so they had cut the paint with water and splashed it over the barn. The facade of protection is opaque and almost transparent and at the slightest hint of weathering the white peels and cracks revealing the red below. In a couple of days the burn will turn to tan and it won’t be an issues for the rest of the trip so long as I continue applying sunscreen.

All morning, the wind was light, mostly coming from the west, but occasionally oscillating into a minor headwind. On the whole, riding conditions and were pretty good until about 2 o’clock. In the morning I rode parallel to the Big Horn Mountains. The bald rolling hills of grass gave way to the mountain range which ran north south parallel to I-90.  By the time I got to Sheridan there were much larger peaks poking up from behind the first ridgeline. There were craggy rocky spires sticking up. They seemed to be well above the tree line, but it was hard to get an accurate vantage point on their true size. In Sheridan I stopped for lunch at noon and treated myself to a 30 ounces of soft serve and over a gallon of various liquids in addition to a personal pizza, a brisket sandwich, and a turkey club. It felt quite nice to sit in the shade because the wind was gradually picking up speed. But in the 30 minutes that I took to eat and restock my food for the afternoon, the temperature jumped up into the 90s and on the first climb back out on the interstate I unzipped my jersey and let it  flap in the wind behind me. For the next 4000 miles I’ll probably ride with my jersey unzipped most of the time just to cool off. This always gives me the funniest tan lines , but that’s not even remotely a concern right now, obviously. Before I build up the tan on my chest, I’ll have a couple days of painful sunburn since my chest has absolutely no tan and is stark white at the moment. I would’ve liked to have ridden for at least 3-4 hours before stopping again, but in the heat, it’s neither advisable or practical, especially when I’m not acclimated yet. For the moment I’m only carrying 2 L of water carrying capacity. I’ll buy a Camelback in the next town where I can find one to purchase, but until then when it’s above 90 I have to stop every two hours simply out of necessity for more liquids. So I found myself stopping in the town of Buffalo just about 40 miles after I stopped for lunch. When I was in the store, a small thunderstorm rolled through and as I got back on my bike and turned onto interstate 25 thunder cracked all around me and large raindrops splattered across the road. It didn’t last long, and the rain felt pretty good. However, rain while I’m bike packing is very rarely welcomed simply because I’d rather keep my gear dry, and when my chamois gets wet I am more likely to chafe, and when my shoes get wet my feet are more likely to rub into blisters. But it didn’t last long, and I didn’t despise the rain in the moment. My kit had accumulated a thick crust of salt from my sweat throughout the day, and as the rain splashed all over me the salt was carried away, and my kit returned back to its original color. I had a couple on and off rain storms throughout the afternoon under increasing cloud cover before I broke free of the majority of the clouds around six.

As the afternoon wore on I tried to settle into a rhythm. The interstate was extremely quiet. I only saw a car every couple of minutes. If you look at a map it kind of makes sense why there is nobody on the road. There just aren’t that many population centers in Wyoming or Montana. 90 was a little bit busier because people and freight travel from the East Coast to the West Coast with more regularity on this thoroughfare, but I-25 was almost devoid of cars. The road had been very recently resurfaced outside of Buffalo. So recently, in fact, that the shoulder hadn’t had time to build up debris, which I was grateful for, as I didn’t have to be constantly on the lookout for the next object that might give me a flat. The road deteriorated closer to Casper.

With the headwind hammering me at about 15 miles an hour, I tried to just put my head down and focus on making consistent and smooth pedal strokes. My legs felt pretty good all day. They just don’t really get tired that much. I know that my legs would be good for 15 or 16 hour days every day, but I’m a little nervous to up my mileage for two reasons. Primarily, I’m worried about injury risk. I think I’m dialed in at a pretty solid equilibrium right now and I don’t want to upset that. The second reason is sleep deprivation. Currently, if I’m not riding or eating, I’m sleeping. I think I’m getting enough sleep, it feels like I’m getting enough sleep, but if I start making my days on the bike longer that time has to come from somewhere and it’s going to come out of my sleep. I could experiment with this and just back off if it felt like I’m not getting enough sleep, but sleep is when my body is recovering and if I cut back on sleep it heightens my risk for injury. So my reasons for not wanting to push too much faster than I am right now are interlocutors of the same problem. The solution is to very gradually build up. However, the argument could be made that there is simply no reason to do this. I rode 240 miles today which is pretty solid. Especially considering that I had a headwind, 240 miles is a relatively respectable distance. Sure I would love to be ticking off 250 mile days back to back to back and if I had a tailwind or even if I had no wind, then I would be doing that right now,. But taking that into consideration, it doesn’t really feel like I need to be super concerned about pushing bigger days. That’s all from a common sense point of view though, and sometimes I  don’t like common sense.

I want to push bigger days because I know I am capable of it and part of me wants that challenge and that suffering. Every night for the past five or six days I’ve had to force myself to pull over and go to sleep. My legs have felt fantastic and keep telling me they want to push on. I know if I listen exclusively to what my legs are telling me than other parts of my body are going to begin to break down. It’s just difficult knowing that I’m leaving fuel in the tank every single day. However, I’m not even 25% of the way to Ushuaia, so there is plenty of time to up the days down the road. I just wish I could be more confident in my daily mileage at the moment because between the wind and my self restraint, I feel like I’m under performing to my true potential. Sure the numbers might look good from an outside perspective. And sure I might be out ahead of the world record on paper, but that’s not why I’m out here and I really want to feel like I’m giving it my all and sometimes it doesn’t feel like I’m giving it everything I have. I’m okay with failing in my goal to get to Ushuaia. It’s a likely reality. But I do not want to get to Ushuaia and look back on this trip and think “wow I really could’ve done better.” Again, I don’t care how fast other people have or have not done this route, I care about how I feel day today and I’m just being honest when I say that I could be doing better.

All that being said, there were plenty of moments this afternoon when I was crawling along at 10 miles, an hour in the face of 20-30mph wins when I was asking myself how it is possible to be turning out the days I am turning out with this wind. I was also feeling beaten and dejected at times. Out there all alone in the hills with nothing but grass. I begin to feel a little bit lonely, and once again I let the wind get to me. Feeling like it’s out to get me. I looked at the forecast for tomorrow and noticed that at about noon, the wind will shift from the south to the east. It will be an east headwind for about three hours before shifting back to the south. I felt like crying. Tomorrow morning I ride south for a little bit before turning east for a couple hours and then turning back south through the evening. I’m slated to have 25-35mph headwinds tomorrow. At 35mph biking is almost impossible. I was feeling so down, but then I was able to bring myself back to reality a little bit. If I keep turning out these 200 mile days day after day with these atrocious winds, then my legs must be stronger than I really thought they were. In addition, it was 90° today and I managed to do really well. That’s a great sign. for the first time this trip, I also rode about 5000 feet for most of the afternoon. The elevation wasn’t noticeable to me, but in theory, my performance should’ve been affected a little bit. It’s a good sign that I didn’t notice elevation.

All afternoon I was feeling a little bit down and dejected, but I was able to keep things together. Then 7:30 rolled around and as the sun set the wind took on a new level of ferocity. Earlier in the day I had estimated that it was possible to get to Casper by around 9 o’clock. This would’ve given me time to eat a big dinner, clean up, work on my bike, and get a really solid night of rest. Now that the winds are whistling at 20 mile an hour consistently I was worried about getting Casper before midnight. I was so close to Casper on paper. With just 50 miles left that would’ve been 2 1/2 hours under favorable conditions, or even under null conditions. But I found myself working my way up these seemingly endless 1% to 2% grade climbs. With the wind as strong as it was on these low-grade climbs I was struggling to hit 10 miles an hour. I was mortified to see that I was averaging about 8 miles an hour at 8 o’clock. Casper felt so close yet so far away. It felt like I was only going uphill and looking back on my elevation profile, I actually was only going uphill. It wasn’t steep, but the interstate gradually climbed up to 5600 feet over the course of 20 miles. I was absolutely distraught and I felt myself mentally cracking for the first time this trip. The headwind is one thing, I can kind of get used to the headwind if I’m just riding for fun, but I have goals and aspirations on hand right now and the headwind feels like it’s doing everything it can to level my dreams. I didn’t get much sleep last night which was intentional because I thought I was going to get to Casper in good time today. Now I was going to pay the price for that. I was feeling heartbroken and honestly so incredibly demoralized. It was dark. It was dead quiet and even though the moon was out and it was beautiful, I couldn’t appreciate the beauty. In fact, I couldn’t even fully appreciate the beauty of the sunset and it looked magnificent. I was thinking about how I’d squandered such a magnificent sunset because I’d been living in my own head and that only made me even more frustrated. Every sunset is unique, I’ll never be able to relive that sunset again. Not only that, people keep telling me that I’m out here living everyone’s dream, which is so so true. I’m living out other’s dreams, I’m living my own dreams, it’s beautiful and I’m so privileged and incredibly proud to be out here. So when I clam up and get frustrated and mad at the world and put my head down when my face should be turned to the beauty of the sky, I’m not only letting myself down and cheating myself out of incredible memories and sights, I’m letting other people down too. I thought about all that and it hurt. it made my pain that much worse. I wasn’t in a mental state to be rationalizing with myself or proceeding with grace, so I just continued to beat myself down. It was dark enough that I couldn’t see the grass waving in the wind, but it felt like I was absolutely crawling and wasn’t making any progress. At one point I was so dumb struck by how slow I was going I actually stopped and got off the bike to feel the wind when I was still to make sure I wasn’t stuck in a nightmare. Yep, the wind was blowing all right. With about 25 miles left to go I managed to start pulling myself together at least a little bit. I didn’t feel like I wanted to cry anymore. Actually, I did feel like I wanted to cry, but I wasn’t going to let myself. I was looking at the moon and I was able to find some beauty in it. This helped me. When I was looking at the moon I saw a little bit of a glow on the horizon. At first, I wasn’t sure what it was, and I thought maybe it was the far off lights of Casper, but this didn’t make any sense since the glow was off to the east and Casper should’ve been into the south. I looked out across the rolling grassy hills bathed in the silvery light of the moon. The glow in the sky rapidly developed into the most magnificent display of beauty in the sky that I’ve ever seen. I hadn’t been looking for the northern lights since I left Canada because I kind of figured I was far enough south that I wasn’t going to see them. I’m south of New Hampshire even. During the strongest solar storms the aurora in New Hampshire rarely is much more than a glimmer in the sky. I have absolutely no idea why I was able to see the aurora so incredibly well. It was actually unbelievable. It was significantly stronger than the aurora I’d seen in Alaska and instead of being, almost exclusively green, this aurora was red and pink and green, and even a little bluish in spots. It also lit up an entire side of the sky. It was so easily visible from the naked eye it almost felt like the Earth was getting brighter because of its presence. I stopped to get off my bike and sat on the edge of the interstate and just watched it for a couple of minutes. Then, as quickly as it come, it disappeared. It probably lasted about five minutes. I don’t know very much about auras, but I thought that usually lasted a lot longer than that and like I said, I had no idea they would ever be the strong this far south. I know the wind is not here to get me, mother nature doesn’t have a grudge against me, but it certainly feels like that at times. If I did believe that, this must’ve been mother nature‘s way of letting me know that things are really hard right now, and they’re going to be really hard for at least another week, but I need to slow down my irrational jumps to anger and appreciate what’s around me. I must do better. I can’t continue to cheat myself, my supporters, or the spirit of bikepacking with such harsh and unreasonable frustration. I got back on my bike and continued climbing. The colors of the aurora ran through my mind, playing back like a video recording. I closed my eyes and saw the colors of the aurora start to meld together in my mind and I could see the faces of people that I miss every time I closed my eyes. In my mind the aurora danced and shifted into figures and faces that I haven’t seen in almost a month now. It made me realize that this trip is starting to get a little bit more real. It’s starting to become more what I expected. Every day there are beautiful moments. Every day I smile and I laugh. And now almost every day I also marred by loneliness, bouts of frustration, and anger, and fear. I’ve proven to myself that I have what it takes physically, but this headwind is making me question how strong my mind actually is. I’ve always thought of myself as someone who has a very strong mind. I think that’s perhaps one of my greatest gifts, even more so than the physical ability that allows me to ride however many miles I’m riding every day. The ability to block out the pain and completely ignore the elemental desire for comfort and human interaction and happiness at its most basic tenet, the ability to block those things out is something that internally I’ve always prized myself with. I’ve always thought I’ve been better than average at essentially bottling up my emotions. It’s not just bottling them up either. It’s not letting them build up, not being affected by them in the first place, so not having the need to bottle them up. I know that bottling up emotions is an awful thing. Almost ubiquitously it’s dangerous and unhealthy. But out here on the bike it’s the only option. The discussion of bottling up emotions is one that I’ve been saving for the blog until we get further down the road. It’s a discussion that I could talk about for days. It’s fascinating to me how I have come to grips with my emotions and how I’ve learned to bottle them up when needed and let them out when it’s healthy too. But this is a conversation for another time. A time when I’m feeling much more sad and distraught than now. Trust me, that time will come, and that won’t be a fun read. But it will be pure and raw and elemental if not a little dead. It’s something I want to write. For myself if nothing else. All these thoughts exist in my mind and I want to capture them before they fade away. Right now they are so strong that I can’t ever imagine them fading away, but I know that time dulls emotions and I’ll regret not writing down these hard things later in life. Even if it does seem a little stupid to be sharing them with the world. I hope this blog doesn’t develop into Bond’s little journal of deep dark thoughts. I know it won’t because there’s so many beautiful and amazing days ahead of me. I’ve got 11 countries to see and almost 11,000 miles to cover. That’s so exciting. It’s impossible to even remotely comprehend how many good days lie ahead. But there will be those days or even those afternoons like today where it just won’t feel so special and this blog will be a reflection of that.

With 20 miles to go, I crested a hill and was gifted the magnificent view of the twinkling lights of Casper in the valley below. I was up at over 5600 feet so I’ve been expecting a big descent into Casper and was overjoyed to realize that for the next 10 miles I would have a shallow grade descent, which would carry me into Casper. This was the best possible outcome in terms of road grade for me. The wind was finally letting up a little bit and I only had about a 10 mile an hour headwind so I could pedal pretty softly on the 2% downgrade and hit at about 20 miles an hour Still, 20 miles of riding is over an hour and it was already almost 10. I just wanted to go to sleep so even when I was on the descent all I could think about was getting to my motel. I rolled into Casper and stayed on I-25 as it turned east. Finally, I exited on the east side of Casper had only a couple hundred yards to ride from my exit ramp to a convenience store with my motel across the street. It was late enough that I didn’t want to stop at a grocery store. This always takes more time and there wasn’t one right there, so I decided to eat out of a gas station convenience store again. I got 2 L of soda, half gallon of chocolate milk, family size pack of Nutter butters, eight microwaveable white castle beef sliders, a quart of snickers ice cream, and three bowls of cornflakes that I scrounged from the motel lobby. Even though it was late, I had a few housekeeping things that I wanted to get done. I ate as much as I could until I felt like I was going to throw up, then I took a shower, got myself to eat until I once again felt like I was going to throw up, then ate some more and then went to bed. I had a hard day. 14 1/2 hours in the saddle, over 16 hours since I left Hardin. But I also had something to be proud of. 240 miles in a headwind is honestly a little ridiculous. I probably pushed a little harder than I should’ve and mentally I paid the price for that even if I feel totally fine physically. The funny thing is, I pushed so hard physically to combat the strain of the wind that my average speed of 16 1/2 miles an hour honestly wasn’t even that bad. I think if I had no wind all day and had ridden 240 miles at 16.5 miles an hour I would’ve been quite happy with that. It was just the last eight hours with the brutal wind that undercut me. I went to bed in a pretty weird emotional state. If I knew that tomorrow was going to be a good weather day I think I would’ve been quite happy, but there’s a dark cloud over me, knowing that I have to wake up again tomorrow and fight an even harder battle. But I made sure that my little victories didn’t go unnoticed and I tried to focus on them. Luckily, I was tired enough that my mental wanderings could do little to stop the onset of deep sleep.