Day 24 - Wind River

Todays mileage: 79
Total mileage: 1,189
End point: Riverton, WY

Frakle Rock?? What in the wonderful world of Wyoming is Frakle Rock? it should be Fraggle Rock or in fact 'Down at Fraggle Rock!'. I am aware during these blogs I rapidly and without warning cross cultures and countries. I know most americans were thinking what the hell is a GCSE? You can probably get one off ebay for $25.. With this in mind I did a bit of research into the origins of fraggle rock. Part of my rationale for this was my shock and horror in watching dogtanian recently. As I child I loved dogtanian and always thought of it as an english show. When I rewatched it was quite apparent that the whole thing is terribly dubbed from either spanish or portuguese. Anyway I digress - Fraggle Rock is Canadian. Ofcourse it is! Only from Ontario could crazy people think of puppets on diggers. What's more interesting is that the UK version actually had quite a lot of scenes remade for it. The tragedy is though that apparently they have lost most of the episodes, that's ITV for you...

Before I start todays blog though I need to have a micro rant. Paleo dieters may not want to read ahead as it involves orange juice, and this as we know was not part of caveman's diet. My anger is targetted towards Tropicana North America. As you may know I am an expert taster in the world of orange juice, some of my flatmates from bristol uni might give me a run for my money but I consider it an essential part of my morning life. At the top of the peers-tropicana scale lies sanguinello with a 10, the pure premium with juicey bits with an 8. Now one plus point before my anger is that tropicana north america do sell orange juice in 1 gallon jugs and they should be commended for this - what however is unforgivable is the selling of orange juice made from concentrate in small bottles. This scores merely a 2 or 3 on the scale and the question needs to be asked why are they destroying their brand like this?? When your in bed with a cold after cycling many miles the last thing you want is orange juice from concentrate...

Last night I fell asleep feeling terrible after only just managing to type out my blog. I woke up feeling about 4/10 to find that the carpet was being relaid in the hotel; carnage of hispanic workers with glue, nails and shouting. I stumbled down the hall to find breakfast was over. The kind Indian owner took pity on me though and made me 2 waffles with golden syrup. I decided at this point that I must push on with my journey; the wind was in favour and I was going mostly downhill. So with the enthusiasm of a small child heading to the dentist I set off.

The town Dubois was rather cute and reminded of how a true wild west town should be. Wooden buildings with appropriate signs on the main street, only big Dodge Ram trucks to make you realise you weren't in the 1890s. As I left the town however an unfortunate incident occurred. My trip computer stopped working again, this is literally the 53rd time this has happened and normally with a wiggle or twist I can get the thing back on track. Not this time so I took the whole back sensor off and reattached it so it was only 1 mm away from the magnet, this took nearly half an hour.. and then still nothing. At this point I lost it, I filmed a rude aggressive video directed at the CEO of Cateye urging nobody ever to buy their stuff again. I then got out my knife and chopped the whole off, slicing brutally through cable ties without a second thought. I was free from miles, top speeds, time... i'd like to say it was enlightenment but I was too ill and to angry.

The road out of Dubois followed the windy river and at first was walled either side by a red canyon which was fairly impressive. The shades of red were deep like something you would see in Arizona. This place was quite bleak and uninhabited - so uninhabited I rode through the first town on the map and managed not even to notice.

After a while the canyon opened up into a large valley and then the road split, one route due east to Riverton which I was on and a road south east to Lander. All this area was Indian Reservation and there were a few signs announcing previous indian wars which had taken place. There were also a couple of buttes, but not as big as the ones in idaho. Oh and a lot of bars, none of which looked like they had been open in the last 15 years.

The wind river valley reminded me of what the out back of australia might be like. Next to the wide river was fertile with plants and horses grazing but outside this was scrubland for miles and miles. I passed an office for the national meterological office, with a golf ball the size of a house, what on earth do they use this for? How does it work? But also a small thankyou for nearly getting the weather right ;)

After a brutal 79 miles I finally arrived in riverton an managed to get in a motel pretty quite for a well negotiated $50. The owner is indian and I think I got him onside with commending india's win of the cricket world cup. This town feels like a small drop of civilization in a very barren land. I'm slightly concerned as the next stop on the civilization trail is Casper and that's 120 miles plus, I will probably have to freestyle camp tomorrow night. I also have a buckled back wheel, its not dire but definately noticable. I have a spoke tuner but can I be trusted to do more good than harm?

Given this there maybe no blog update tomorrow as I don't have any AT&T service, nor will I have till after Nebraska and that could be a couple of weeks. Patience is a virtue I guess :)