Day 30, Tour 10 Idaho Falls to Arco, ID

An irrigation rainbow

This was a ride that started out OK, then got bad, then got worse, then turned into a ride that I wanted very much to be over. It was so bad that, after being literally blown off the road by a wind gust, I even tried, once, to hitch a ride. I've never done that before.

The problem was the wind. When I left Idaho Falls, about 8 AM, after a good breafast at McDs, the wind was from the south at about 10 mph. About 40 miles, and five hours ;-{, later, where US 20 joins US 26, it was gusting to 35 mph and was close to a pure crosswind. There is nothing on this route to block the wind, except trucks and RVs passing me. The shoulder is usually about 4 ft wide, but 2 feet of that is rumble stripped and the out side edge slopes down to small, loose, gravel. It was really hard to keep the bike on the shoulder, even when no jerk in a big RV was passing too close me. Since going off the outside of the shoulder meant, at best, stoping as the wheels dug into the deep gravel, I hit the, nasty variety, rumble strip a lot. When I got to Arco, I discovered that the seat bolt had loosened several turns - the seat was quite loose - apparently because of the vibrations cause by all those rumble strip encounters.

US 20 starts out heading northwest and curves around to heading southwest. Then it curves back to the west and joins US 23. Then it curves northwest for a while, back west for a bit and finally north west into Arco.The riding was worst when the road was heading west and best - but still not good - when it was heading northwest.I rode for 8 hours, mostly on teh drops, fighting to keep my bike on the shoulder, to cover 65 miles.

Rather than writing more about this riding hell, I think I'll just finish this web page with images.

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