Tailwind at last!

Whoo-hoo, I got a tailwind! This was a really short mileage day, too, only 40 miles from Newcastle, WY to Custer, SD. It was really hilly but quite lovely, and getting blown up a hill is a really great thing.

I've taken pictures crossing every state line - into Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and now South Dakota. I continue to be amazed at the combination of my own geographic ignorance and the realities of the shifting landscape... I'd imagined eastern Wyoming and western South Dakota to be sort of barren, scrubby high-country deserty stuff (like southeastern Idaho)... but all of Wyoming seemed so green. I know they got a lot of late rain this spring but it's totally lovely. And then crossing into SD, it was pine woods! I love that smell. And the fact that things can change so much in the course of one day's bike ride.

I'm so taken with the area around Custer that I decided to stay an extra day here. I needed to get a blood test (my regular thing re: the coumadin/clotting time I have to monitor) and it turned out there's a regional hospital here. People (actually person: Duane, who rocks) at Kaiser in SF was amazingly responsive about faxing in an order and the whole thing - from first phone call to getting out of there - only took about an hour. This was probably the most responsible thing I've done on this whole trip, other than deciding not to camp by myself in grizzly bear territory...

Tomorrow I'm celebrating my actual birthday (which I started observing at least a week ago) by going on a day-ride without all my gear, along the Needles Highway and to see the Crazy Horse Memorial. Followed by PIE, of course, at the Purple Pie Place just up the road from the RV park where I'm camping. (I tested the pie today, just to make sure it would suffice, and I was satisfied.)

So far turning 50 is great!