We MADE it !!!!! We totally made it!!!!!! and now….. we’re tired!! ;D

Oh you lovely people!   Many of you have asked where the update for last night and for today is!!   LOL!!! ;D  Yesterday was a LONG and FAR day!!  It was LOOOOOONG and FAAAAAAAAR !!!   David City seems to always be on the horizon and yet we always seemed to be heading away from it!!   We had MORE foul weather ( naturally! ) and there is lots to share but since our families met us there that night we were busy with them and then went to bed about 8:30 so I never had chance to blog.  My apologies! I’ll write more on David City tomorrow!

Today was chaos too as we had MORE vial storms and had the sirens going off at 3am which meant we had to evacuate our tents and hasten to the arena in the pitch dark and pouring rain.  BRAN had the dubious distinction of being actually named by the NOAA weather radio folks in their storm announcement…. I’m not sure in what context they were named exactly but I fear it may be as the heralders of fierce weather!!  After riding out in torrential rain and head winds ( oh really?  Again? ) eventually the weather turned warmer and the wind dropped.  It blew enough to dry off our clothes but not enough to drive us into a fury.  Everyone was in a hurry to get home and we all rode our fastest.  Speeds of 32 miles per hour were reached on some of the downhills and we all pedaled that little bit harder on the ups!!  My family were out catching pictures along the way and you can not imagine my delight when we finally pulled into the parking lot of the SAC museum.  Wow.  What a journey.

….. wonder where they’ll be starting from next year?????!!!!!

( It is way past my new regular bed time of 8:30 pm and I’m falling asleep at the switch here, but want to let you know I will be posting photos in the next day or so and fleshing out some of our day trips.  We have lots of silly stories such as being chased by a Great Dane, mechanical bull riding,  falling off bikes and scoring a 10~!, all you can eat PIE, the snoring chorus and more…..)

Thanks so much for all your support…… it meant so much to us to know that you were out there rooting for us to succeed.  You guys rock.

Mwah!!!

66.7 miles and what do you get???

Well today started interestingly… infact it really started in the middle of the night with severe thunderstorms and high winds which shook and bent our tent so much that it came in on us.  We moved everything away from the sides, mopped up any rain that had come in and tried to go back to sleep.  I peeked out of my window to see what the rest of camp looked like and noticed our neighbor’s tent blowing like crazy in the wind, the rain fly whipping around like a flag.  From inside the tent I could hear……sssnnnnnoooooooooooooorrrrrrrrrr  !!  BRAN riders sleep HARD!! ;D

We woke up again to find the tent coming in on us again.  Of course, being the strong, brave, mature women that we are, we flung our legs in the air to brace the poles, stuck our hands in the air to hold back the fabric ……. and squealed and giggled like girls!!!: D  It was hysterical!  The tent kept lifting up into the air or bending wildly as if any moment it would break loose and snap in two!  The organizers instructed us to remain in our tents for an hour until the storm passed so Lisa and I thought we’d get some extra and much needed sleep… only moments later we were told to pack up camp immediately as a hail storm was due to arrive in 15 minutes!!  We packed up as best as we could and as quickly as we could in the raging wind and we hustled to the school gym to wait out the storm.  Sure enough, in 15 minutes the storm came with hail, rain, thunder, lightening…. the works!  We waited out the storm but some of the more dedicated riders were chomping on the bit to get going!  Once we finally headed out it was cold and wet out.  That was fine until then it became cold, wet and STORMY out.  Thunder, lightening and wind.   Perfect.  The rain was so heavy that we were just saturated…Lisa could squeeze her hands together and water would pour from her gloves! We stopped at a restaurant and warmed our hands and feet by running them under a hot tap and then warmed our insides with coffee!!  We stalled as long as we could but then we had to get going again.  THIS time we had a head wind to contend with.  A 45 mile an hour head wind!!  Yeahy.  Sigh.  We fought the head wind for miles, turned to go North …..and fought a cross wind which threatened to blow us off the highway at every opportunity!!    We stopped at the town of Spalding for lunch and then headed out to our final destination, Albion.  As we left Spalding we saw a fun sign…..  ” Only 21 hills to Albion.”  Firstly, yikes.  Secondly…. there were WAY more than 21 hills AND THEY WERE HUGE!!!

The town of Albion were really pleased to see us!  We had a cheering crew on the corner with signs, little girls had come out to stand alongside the road and hand out water, local businesses had set out signs such as “If you feel you can go on head out to (the local) funeral parlor!!…. for Free Water!! “  There were bikes on display everywhere and kids out watching us ride in and shouting out questions to us!!

Tonight we are camped in the Boone County Fairgrounds and there is all manner of activities lined up for us to do in town including mechanical bull riding which I would LOVE to do but which my backside is not so inclined!!  Lisa is currently in the middle of a massage after we both shared 3 pieces of pie since we couldn’t pick only one kind!  We will soon take one of the many shuttle buses into town to the local swimming pool for a quick dip, then we’ll probably go into town to see what’s going on….. but then…. we also need to be sleeping by 10 at the very latest… another looooong day tomorrow! ;D

90.87 miles and we rode every one!! ;D

We are so AWESOME!!    We rode that whole ride and it was a doozy!!  We were told it was an 84.7 mile ride so imagine our delight to find how long it really was!!! ;D  Oh MY!!  I had ZERO cell reception and, it seems, zero reception for the GPS …. sorry guys….  I’m charging it up so it should work tomorrow!!: D

Tonight we are staying in Burwell.  We skipped the Rocky Mountain Oyster feed and opted for Pizza instead!! ;D  All of the towns are SO accommodating to the BRAN riders but they do insist on trying to feed us BBQ Beef Sandwiches.  Over and over again. 

The atmosphere here is incredible, especially today.  The ride was really long but most of us completed it so everyone is euphoric.  All the riders and the support people are so kind and we have made many new friends!  We’d left our tent out this evening to dry off as it was damp from condensation.  When we got back from getting our pizza someone had put the rain fly on it and put all of our stuff inside as they thought it was going to rain !!   How nice!!

Anyway, it is time for me to call my hubby and kiddoes and then hit the sack!  We go to bed REEEALLY early around here!!!

…….Only 64 miles tomorrow!!! 

Day 3 – Our best day yet!

Shortly after we arrived in camp last night, even before we got our tent up, they announced there was a possible storm on the way with heavy winds. They offered the option of sleeping in the school gym, which didn’t sound terribly appealing. We debated for a long time about what to do, and finally decided to put the tent up and take our chances. After an awesome dinner, they started sounded a siren in the camp telling all campers to take only their blankets and pillows and head to the gym due to a severe weather warning. We put our bikes in the tent to hold it down and headed inside. We camped out in the library snacking and talking with other bikers, and finally got the all clear at 9:30. We were exhausted by that time,  and there was still talk of more storms, so we found a secret storage room off the library where it was quiet, dark and away from the crowds.

This morning started with breakfast at 0430 – eeaaarrly!! They did an awesome job with breakfast with so many options! We were nervous to survey the damage of the night’s storms, as we heard some people say their tents blew over. Since ours is fairly large, we weren’t sure what we’d find, but were really pleased to find it still standing and intact!! We packed up and headed out by 0700. It was a mostly down-hill day (relatively speaking!) with little wind – that made a big difference! We made AWESOME time – we made it to Mullen (40 miles) in just 3 hours…and there was even pie left for a change! We had lunch at the cafe and got back on the road an hour later.

We continued to make really good time today – we averaged 16.1 mph. Once we got to camp, we couldn’t believe our good luck – MORE PIE!!! We snatched up two pieces of cherry pie, forsaking pitching the tent for the time being! Once we got the tent pitched, we headed for the showers…ICE COLD showers. Wow. Refreshing. We found a very nice man who gave us a ride to the motel to do some laundry, and are now hoping we can find another very nice one to take us back to camp! It’s only a mile away, but after riding 65 miles, that seems like too much effort!!

Photos…..

Here are some pics from day one ….

Day Two and We ROCKED it !! :D

We got a great night’s sleep last night thanks to Tylenol PM and we woke to the rain!!!  We packed up and headed out about 7am and rode rode rode!!!  It really wasn’t too bad today and it certainly helped to use the walkman and that there was plenty of food along the way this time!! ;D   Also Rex got the GPS working… check facebook for the address since he didn’t have the Blog info handy!!

We are expecting some storms soon so we have all been instructed to move to the school and Lisa and I have staked out a sleeping place between the shelves!! ;D Hopefully it will pass over without incident and our tent and bikes will still be there when we return!!  :}

We rode through the sandhills today and saw some lovely wildflowers, cactus and sage, turtles, meadowlarks and yellow headed blackbirds.  It was so pretty!!

Since we are stuck inside I’ll spend a few minutes putting some pics up!! ;D

Riding the Wagon Of Shame!!!

Pah!!  Lisa gets all bent out of shape about the fact that we had to ride the Sagging Wagon home today.  We rode for over 60 miles on absolutely NO SLEEP!!  We did not sleep at ALL last night.  It was probably a combination of being overtired, cold, nervous and uncomfy!!  At about 2:30 am I went into the school building to go to the bathroom and I found a really comfortable looking couch!!  The school was lovely and warm so I went to get Lisa and we curled up on there for all of 2 hours until everyone started to get up for breakfast.  However, comfortable and warm though it was, we didn’t sleep there either!!  A very nice stranger, Jim, aka the Candyman, offered us some of his little blue pills for the evening….!! ;D  (They were Tylenol PM… but we did check!!)…  So tonight at least, a good night’s sleep is on the cards…. provided of course, the storm that is currently brewing keeps the heck away!!

Anyhoo…. we had one heck of a ride today.  We rode up and down and up and down and up and down the biggest flaming hills I have ever seen!  I thought NE was supposed to be FLAT!!  It’s NOT!!  One hill was, and i’m NOT exaggerating, 10 freaking miles long with an elevation of 1000 feet.  Really.  The riding DOWN was awesome.  …..sigh.  AND we skipped lunch, unintentionally, but it turns out that in Far Off Western Nebraska the towns are faaaaaaaaaar apart!!!  like…. 50 miles apart.  If we’d known that, we’d probably have eaten at the one town we were in first.  So the short story is we were tired, hungry and physically exhausted.  A very nice SAG man came by with his truck and hauled us onboard.  He drove us to our camp site and more nice men fetched our bags and carried them to where we wanted to camp! ;D   Spoiled eh?! ;D  Turns out today we a really hard day for everybody and MANY people sagged out besides us…. so we don’t feel so bad!!!  Tomorrow is another day!!!

I took tons of pics along the way and I promise, once we have showered and had some sleep I will put them on the blog.  Really really! ;D  Until then…..  keep watching this space! ;D