Day 11

July 28, 2004

Sheridan, WY to Gillette, WY

Riding through the small town of Clearmont, we passed by a historic jail

inside, was the following note

and here’s the “Last Jail Bird”

we also rode past a lot of grazing land

The landscape today – wide open fields with small hills in the distance

Lunch was near some old ruins with lots of interesting stuff

Judi scored the perfect PAC Tour bike

playing horseshoes at lunch (looks like a ringer)

Historical marker at lunch

Today’s message board

At the end of today’s ride, I noticed that my one of my shoes was torn near the sole. Here’s Lon, working on my shoe – he’s drilling small holes in the plastic sole near the tear

now he’s sewing the shoe with a canvas needle

and here’s the completed repair. The entire operation took less than 20 minutes. Amazing!

Our progress so far

Profile and statistics (absolute altitude is correct).

We started the day with a gentle climb of about 1,000 feet with a radio tower at the summit. On the descent, I seemed to be going a lot slower than my riding companion. Soon, I figured out why … I had my first flat tire. We had gentle rollers for the second half of the day. A strong tail wind really boosted the average speed and made this a nice recovery day after yesterday’s brutal climb up the Big Horns.