Air Conditioning (Please)

We learned yesterday that early is good in these hotter climes. We only had 54 miles to go from Umatilla to Walla Walla, but still decided to set off at 6:30 after a good breakfast. One rider wanted to ride more slowly than yesterday, so I led out at an easy pace. After a few miles, we again picked up a tailwind, and clipped along at a good pace, getting to the Washington border (22 miles from Umatilla) within an hour. We lollygagged along at about 16 mph, taking a break to get some ice water at a mini-mart, and were approaching Walla Walla by around 10:00 am. Easy riding, but we could see the start of the mountains to the east. After a day's rest, we will be heading into Idaho.

Since we're resting and relaxing, naturally I went for a lazy bike ride into town (we're staying in the Walla Walla Assembly of God church school, which is out of session at the moment ... a gym, air conditioning, everything to boys could want. So anyway, as I said, a lazy bike ride into town, to the Starbucks on the corner of Main and 3rd. I believe I had a cup of coffee in the same Starbucks the day it first opened, which would have been about 15 years ago! I started talking to a couple of men who were admiring my bike, and it turned out that one of them, Mike Harting, had been an avid cyclist until he broke his leg in a cycling accident. He had just gotten the rod removed from his leg, and was proudly showing it off. He now does oil work in North Dakota, so we may encounter him later during ourtrip. You never know.

Mike's buddy, a Basque named Cesareo Texidor, wore a Special Forces badge on his cap. He had been a medic in the Special Forces, twice wounded. Just the sort of person who could benefit from the charity that we are fundraising for. Of course I told them about the blog, and about the group of us riding across the country, and our cause, Operation Comfort Warriors.

You can read more about our bike ride, and help us reach our $10,000 goal by following the "Donate" link on the Bike Trip America site at the link above.

Meanwhile, back to the subject at hand. Air conditioning. We are hoping for good weather all the way ... not too hot, not too cold, not to rainy, not too many mosquitoes. Not too many real early mornings. And for Pat's sake (Pat is our support driver), hopefully the shop in Walla Walla will be able to fix the car air conditioning once and for all. That way, maybe we can all reach the east coast in comfort, knowing that "comfort" is rather a relative term, both for those of us riding bicycles (approximately 1,056,300 turns of the crank), and for Pat, who has to handle the GMC Suburban on the blue roads of America (all those smaller roads that will lead us through the hinterlands).