Minden, Nebraska

After a great ride into McCook and a relaxing night, it was time to head east to Minden. The team woke up at our usual 5:30 and had a fantastic breakfast with the same ladies that made us dinner the night before. They prepared us a great breakfast casserole, fruit, and banana bread. Once everyone was fed the ladies said a great prayer to send us off and we left McCook.

Today in my pace line was Doug Meenan, a graduate of NIU and the oldest cyclist on our team, as well as Austin Shepard, a sophomore at the University of Florida State, and the youngest cyclist on our team. After close to 300 miles in the past 3 days the whole team was pretty tired, especially the three of us. We had just shy of 100 miles again and unfortunately we were faced with a lot of rolling hills and a pretty strong head wind. About 30 miles into the ride Doug's front tire crossed Austin's back tire and Doug took a pretty hard spill. Luckily I reacted quickly enough and was able to get out of the way and didn't fall with him. After that we all lost a bit of motivation and the rest of the ride went very slowly. Mark had lunch ready for us at mile 70 and after eating I got a burst of energy. I told Austin and Doug that we needed to speed up and make it to lodging, and we did. We averaged about 18 mph for the last 30 miles and made it to lodging. Minden is not a very big town, and with a population of only 2900 there is not much to do. For the second day in a row we did not have a friendship visit which kind of bummed me out.

After getting showered up we had some free time before going to dinner. Pizza Hut sponsored dinner for us and it was absolutely great. I was expecting them to have limited kinds of food for us but they really hooked us up. They allowed us to eat at the salad bar, made us bread sticks, 5 different types of pizza and cinnamon sticks. Dinner really changed the mood of the whole team, and everyone left happy. Upon arrival back to lodging we set up a basketball tournament. Everyone that wanted to participate was spread up into 5 teams and we had a blast. Although I am pretty bad at basketball it is still fun to go up against your fellow cyclist. With 4 points and 2 assists in our two, ten minute games I think it is time for me to retire.

I am ending my night getting caught up with my blog and uploading pictures while enjoying some good wifi, and hanging out with my teammates. We have a shorter ride tomorrow into Grand Island, Nebraska and then a day off the bike the following day. Should be a blast as always!

Josh doing a great job of marking the final turn into lodging. Always a great sight to see.