Wednesday July 16th 2008.
Today was SWEEP day, oh glorious SWEEP day. It started out at 5:50 this morning with getting stuff out for breakfast. Now mind you, breakfast starts at 6:30, but some eager beavers out there were ready in line for breakfast (with their tents down, things all their belongings packed up), we started serving breakfast, and continued until everyone had managed to get out of bed, eat breakfast and make their lunches. When everyone is done all of their packing up, they toss their gear/hockey bags by the gear truck. We loaded that up with 141 massive hockey bags and prepared ourselves for the road. Our sweep team broke off into two teams…the first group set out right away, and my group (see picture in the dinner) Marty, John, Johnny, Kaitlyn, Jeff, Theo and I went to have coffee and tea before we set upon riding the white lines. Our ride today had many stops along the way.
The first stop was a dairy farm, not just any dairy farm, but one big large dairy farm. They milk over 1700 cows, 3 times a day. Workers work around the clock; this is a major business venue, not just love for the cow and land. We were given a tour of the parlour, and even were allowed to go under and into the 50 rotary (merry-go-round) milker which runs 22 hours of the day and each cow gives 10 gallons of milk per day.
The cows are on this rotary milker for approximately 10 minutes before the milker machine falls off and they are slapped by a rubber hanging ‘mud flap’ to awaken then from their stupor and then they are released. This farm was quite the farm to visit.
The next stop was at this bridge that was over 11 seconds of spit falling…or over 700 feet high. This ride was actually more enjoyable than yesterdays for there was more to see than just sage brush. A CRC had offered to put on lunch for us and that was glorious when we arrived there. Cold water, watermelon and subs…and then they pulled out fresh raspberries which were a treat. When we were leaving they were dumping the tub of ice out and I put some in the cracks of my helmet to help cool down, others just splashed the water on themselves. Continuing on our trek of 142 km, we headed towards Shoshone Falls, where the Snake River falls in thunder 210 feet over a rocky ledge higher than Niagara Falls. The Shoshone Falls were discovered around 1840’s and are known in Idaho as the “Niagara of the west” although not surrounded by commercial development. The descent down to the falls was a 5-6% grade down, which meant a lovely ascent after wandering around by the falls for a few moments. We were able to talk to many of the people down there and hand out sea to sea cards. Many people are very curious as per who we are, and why they see so many cyclists going by, and not only that, but cyclists wearing safety vests that are all the same.
Kaitlyn and I headed up the hill first, for we feared we would have to take a couple of breaks, despite the incline on the way up, we only stopped once at the entrance part where you pay to go in, and then again, 2 km down the road to wait for the rest of our group….we both agreed that we would do that climb 5 times over than doing Steven’s pass again!
Continuing on our way we followed our route and were cruising until we reached Walter’s motor home. Walter is driving his motor home the whole trip along with us and he is a support vehicle. We generally have a seat on his lovely lawn chairs, chat with him about the ride, the things we do, get water that he ‘oh so willingly’ provides, and then we carry on our way…sometimes Walter has special treats for us, (liquorice, or dropjes) which make the stop that much better. THANKS WALTER—you’re fantastic! We managed to get to Walter without encountering anyone to sweep, but met up with people at this last SAG wagon. So we hung out there for about a half hour to give the others a head start. In all, we left camp in the morning around 8:30, and arrived at 6:45 pm. It was a long day, but a very fun day. We made the most of it as a ‘sweep team’ our average speed was 28.5, and most of the day was slight climbing/ on an incline.
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