Day 10 Sea 2 Shining Sea

Today we had the pleasure of riding all day with the one and only Paul Curley, our fearless road captain. We left Eureka Nevada by continuing our climb again from the day before, this is the second day in a row we started by finishing a climb. We, being the 'fast' group left a half hour after the 'comfort' group, stayed together slowly reeling in the 'comfort' group. We kept it under control for the climbs, meaning they went slow enough to keep the tandems in the group and on the down hill the tandems went to the front for a little more speed. It was quite fun. We caught them at a water stop at about 21 miles. Great job 'comfort' group, they were moving. We continued our steady pace all the way to lunch.

After lunch the real fun began. It was just five of us, Paul, Hunter, Joe, Larry and I(on the tandem) and Tom(our world traveller). Paul came up with a great idea of having all of the single bikes in our group take turns helping Larry and I up the hills and Larry and I would pick up the pace and fly down the hills. And fly we did. Where as Larry and I would normally climb at 8-9mph, they had us climbing at 11-12mph. They were getting a good workout pushing and learn new skills from Paul and we were getting a bit of help on my least favorite thing to do, climb.  When we hit the top of the hill Larry and I would put our 400+ pounds to good use. One thing I can do well is go fast on descents and keep the speed up on the flats. On the final climb we had Seth in our sights cranking up the hill on his handcycle, he was not getting closer fast at all. Seth is the real deal, he can keep a super hard pace all day long. We caught him at the top of the hill only because he stopped to wait for us. On the downhill Seth also jumped on the train behind the tandem and enjoyed the draft. It was an absolute blast pulling all these guys into Ely to end our 10th day of riding.