Rest Day: Sioux Falls, SD

What do tired cross-country cyclists do on a day off?

They watch the Tour de France. I just returned from the lobby of our Super 8 motel, where about 10 cyclists were watching Lance Armstrong and Ivan Basso jockeying for position at the end of 5 1/2 hours of cycling up four mountains in the Pyrenees. We all suffered with Lance and Ivan as they struggled to keep up on the 8.4 percent grade. (We did 10 percent on the Teton Pass, so we can relate.) My heart went out to big Jan Ullrich who eventually got dropped in the last few miles of the climb. (I have the same problem trying to keep up with Paul and the young studs on a big climb.) Opie said, "Doesn't that make you want to get on your bike?" Hell, no.

We are now far, far from the hors categorie climbs. We're in Sioux Falls, on the eastern edge of flat eastern South Dakota. The wind is whipping up outside and Paul and I are very glad that we are not fighting it on our bikes. We slept until 8:30 and then walked over to Starbucks to remind ourselves of what coffee tastes like when it doesn't come from a can. We're loving Sioux Falls.

Yesterday was another slog against the wind, but they usually weren't in our faces and we only had 72 miles to go over mostly flat terrain, so it wasn't too bad. It was very hot again and also somewhat humid (although far from DC humid). The scenery was mostly corn fields and soybean fields. It was kind of pretty and bucolic for about five miles. The roads were dead straight so there was none of the mystery about what was around the next turn. There was no next turn. A sunflower field (see pic: "sunflower field with cyclist") was a highlight.

A jazz festival was going on in Sioux Falls yesterday and a couple of cyclists and I hiked the 2+ miles from our dinner buffet (all you can eat goes over big in this crowd) to the park where the festival was held. Paul decided that he'd rather watch the Nationals beat the Brewers so he skipped the music. Too bad, because the festival was a real happening. The Sioux Falls Argus Leader reported that there were 45,000 people at JazzFest on Friday night and organizers expected more on Saturday, when we were there, to see jazz legend, Kenny Wayne Shepherd. You could tell that he was a jazz legend because he had a promotional video that featured lots of black blues singers and guitarists implying that KWS had something to do with them. In fact, KWS is a very white band that sounds like it is still searching for a unique identity. Nonetheless, tout Sioux Falls seemed very happy that he was there, and he played the crowd expertly. He kept on asking if Sioux Falls was having a good time, at which point flood lights would illuminate the crowd, which went wild (in a very restrained, polite, midwestern way). I actually found the warm-up acts more interesting, but that's just me.

I just posted many more pictures from the past few weeks. Click this link to see the new album (http://adobe.kodakgallery.com/Slideshow.jsp?mode=fromshare&Uc=97van5jj.8qi23wnv&Uy=-iwcx8e&Ux=0). After lunch, I'll add some captions so you can figure out what you're looking at.

Cheers,

Len