nearly to a rest day

Dick is the oldest rider at the ripe age of 70. He’s absolutely amazing and has been a trooper in every way. I told him that he was my hero today, and I meant it. He’s struggled a bit over this last stretch of six days without a rest day, so he has decided to take the day off and ride with one of the crew members in the support van. The support van has been termed the unfortunate “saggin’ wagon”, and if you have to ride in it, it’s called “sagging”. I think these are less than compelling terms, and I have suggested renaming the vehicle something a bit more positive, like the “Rehabilitation Facilitation Vehicle” (or RFV for short). It hasn’t really caught on yet, but I’m sure it’s just a matter of time. :o)

Breakfast was catered by the Tu Phat Girls who made breakfast casseroles, french toast, and fruit salad. Mmm! We then took off to cover the 87 miles between Tyler, Minnesota and New Ulm, Minnesota.

I rode with Brian again in the morning, and it helped the time go more quickly. After lunch, I rode with a big group -- Brian, Caitlin, Gabe, and Kasey. We had a lot of fun chatting and playing guessing games like “20 Questions”. The boys took off and Caitlin and I were determined to keep up, so we went pretty quickly through the afternoon. Today was our sixth day of riding with no break (our longest stretch without a break yet), but somehow I wasn’t feeling too bad and even seemed to be getting faster as the week went along (or maybe it was just that the headwinds were finally easing off). Unfortunately the headwinds missed the memo that their time was up, and they raged against us over the last 10 miles into New Ulm. We had to take several breaks during the 10 miles because battling the winds was so exhausting. Also unfortunately, the storm clouds that had threatened to break all day made good on their threat about an hour before we got in to New Ulm, so we were drenched by rain over the last bit of the ride before arriving at 2 PM.

During today’s ride, we passed through some cute towns, such as Sleep Eye, Minnesota (I believe this town was named after an Indian chief), where you see a lot more locally owned stores and restaurants (such as Sleepy Eye’s very tempting ‘Casey’s homemade donuts’ store) and few chains.

We are staying in the dorms at Martin Luther University (the one that nailed his theses to the church door, not the one who had a dream – although I’m sure Martin Luther did dream, just not the dream) in New Ulm, MN. We had a dinner of spaghetti, salad, and ice cream at the school cafeteria.

New Ulm is a really cute little town, settled in the 1850s by Germans. It still very much retains the charming Bavarian character. We also lucked out and our rest day coincides with the Bavarian Blast Festival which I definitely plan to attend.