Thursday - Things starting to go to plan.....we wish

Another sweaty night in the tent saw none of us getting much sleep although the full moon did look pretty special! The plan for the day was simple, climb up one last mountain and then bomb it downhill in Nebraska and chill out by a reservoir, if you haven't guessed already the day didn't go to plan.....

The climb wasn't so bad and after only an hour or so we made it up 1600ft up to the highest point of our trip and the highest point on the I-80 at 8700ft. Here we chilled out for a bit and took in somd history at a rest area about the Lincoln highway which was once upon a time the quickest way to get from San fran to new York, coincidently this is kinda the route we have been following so far and will continue to follow.

The big downhill we were all waiting for never happened and instead sauntered along the rolling roads all the way to Cheyenne, however we did pass through Buford, the smallest town in America with a population of one! Tom popped into a Murdochs to swap the underarmour pull over top he'd got on Evanston, this time ensuring when the woman came back with a large size it wasn't a womans. Then we went to Rock on Wheels, a bike shop recommended to us by the information center we'd stopped at earlier. We all stated what was wrong with our bikes and George the Greek and his trusty sidekick Austin got to work. Jack, Ben and Tom all had a brake and gear tune up which didn't take long until said Austin spotted cracks in Tom's rear wheel, the same as Jacks in Utah. George didn't have a spare wheel of that type so offered to build one using a rim he had spare. While this was going on we all heard a loud bang outside the store like a gun had gone off. Infact it was an inner tube blowing up. Bens lead in the puncture league was cut to just 7-6 as Jacks puncture drought was dramatically ended.

So we now had 2 hours to burn while Tom had a wheel crafted for him so we went to a cafe called 'the pie lady' which served normal food and sweet pies after in a room with walls covered in different home made skirts. Yeh. This was a good mile away so the time walking back to Rock on Wheels flew by. We paid for the bike work and hit the road, now on highway 30, the first time we'd been off Interstate 80 in almost 10 days. We got to Pine bluffs 40 miles away and ate at uncle bobs cafe. We came back out after burgers into heavy rain and cycled to Oliver Reservois State Recreation Park 13 miles away. We pitched our tent and found no running water, a tragic irony. Then we were kept awake by the union pacific freight train sounding it's horn all night and some redneck family arguing and singing kareoke to rhiana in their truck. An interesting, testing and wet day.