Day 9 -- Eureka!

Although I will only be able to update my blog sparingly, you can follow our team on twitter and on the Push America website (we take turns writing journal entries). This is the entry I wrote for today, so I am just going to re-post it:

Push America Journal

Twitter

e woke up today at 5:30am in a small church perched in the hillside mountain village of Austin, Nevada. After a quick breakfast on the steps of the church, we mounted our bikes and started a rough climb up 2 peaks in the first 8 miles of the trip. The mountains quickly became deserted plains. Although the ride was of average length, headwinds of up to 15 to 20 mph slowed us down tremendously and made the ride across the loneliest highway in America quite difficult. The team pushed on through, however, and all but one of the cyclists made it through the day.

Naturally, Eureka was on top of another mountain—we were glad to be welcomed with a double burger, French fries, and a milkshake sponsored by the local DJ’s diner. It was a delight after a challenging day across the desert. We left our mark by adding a dollar bill signed by the JOH ’09 team to their wall of fame.

Our afternoon was mostly spent napping at the local Eureka Elementary School which is kindly lodging us for the night. The local chapter of the Lion’s Club sponsored a delicious spaghetti diner made with a locally famous marinara sauce. The Lions proudly talked about their town and the fact it does not have one stoplight. It has been almost 20 years since they started sponsoring us and they were proud to say that they plan on keeping the tradition alive.

Tomorrow, we ride to Ely! We’ll be in Utah within the week...