Bishop Bike Adventure Day 10 July 10, 2010

Wow! What a day. First, although still in the 90’s, there was some cloud cover and a nice tailing breeze that helped us along our 96-mile trip today. There were three incredible descents. The first was about 500 feet, the second 1,100 feet, and the last 1,900 feet, this last one over 12 miles long. How amazing to coast, apply brakes, and still carry 38 mph down the road! On one of the descents, Tim hit 41 mph.

Early in the day, we took a side road from Walla Walla to Waitsburg. What a beautiful stretch of road, ushered by golden fields of wheat among the rolling hills, as the accompanying photo attests. To make matters even better, there was virtually no traffic and the wind was behind us. Today was in stark contrast to several days ago--what a difference when the wind fills your sail from behind rather than head-on--must be a few sermons in this! We also thought it appropriate to go through a town named “waits”-burg, as those of you who attended our wedding might surmise!

We met a busload of youth and their chaperone/counselors in Dayton, where we stopped for lunch. They were returning from a week long church camp trip in Montana. We engaged some of the adults and shared thehopeline.com with them. One of the chaperones had not heard of Dawson McAllister, while another, a missionary on leave from Mexico, said, “Dawson McAllister? He’s the youth pastor for America!" He was very intrigued by the material that we shared and was wondering whether he could hopecoach in another country. He was going to check out the website. In general, we found that most of the people who we spoke with today were very friendly, interested, and supportive.

We ended the day in Clarkston, WA at a nice Quality Inn Motel, conducive to our late hour shopping spree at Super Walmart and our Sunday morning walk to a local church service. Incidentally, when we pulled in around 8:30, the bank thermometer was still reading 95 degrees. We continue to be amazed that these are not unusual temperatures for these areas during this time of the year. Clarkston is just the other side of the Snake River, which separates Washington from Idaho. This last photo is of the Snake River just after the last long descent referred to above. Its sister city on the Idaho side of the river is Lewiston; thus Lewis and Clark live on today.

Our biking Garmin likes to equate the mileage and altitude to calories consumed. Today, based on the 96 miles traveled and the 2,500 feet climbed, it figured that we each needed to consume 4,200 calories, this without knowing the weight that we are carrying on the bikes. Rest assured that we have been consuming plenty of food and fluids to provide the necessary fuel and replenishment!

We tried to sample some videos today, and are trying to download one to the blog. We hope you are able to enjoy it.