Day 18

(Tucumcari, NM to Dalhart, TX - 98 miles) Looks like I'll be handing out a few more refunds. I made it to the first SAG stop at 9:30 am and had to call it a day. As it turns out, I wasn't the only one struggling. A bout of food poisoning was going through the group and we were dropping like flies. Only about 8 people made it the whole way and I can't begin to explain how difficult a day it was even without the illness. Yesterday's ride was 110 miles and it was one of the hardest days so far in terms of distance and head wind. However, yesterday we had a few occasions where the wind was at our side and that gave us a bit of break. Today, though, was a different story. We crossed into Texas today and lost an hour when we changed to the Central Time Zone. The leaders thought, since it was going to be another long day and the winds usually increase as the day goes on, that it would be better to start an hour earlier. Bags had to be outside and loaded on the truck by 6 am. After a breakfast stop at Denny's about 3 miles from our hotel, four of us started out riding together at 6:45. Today's ride to Dalhart was northeast for the first 20 miles, then directly north. Had we had yesterday's winds, it would have been a tolerable day. But no, the winds shifted during the night and came out of the north dead in our face all day long. It took my group 2 1/2 hours to go 31 miles, the first SAG stop. I was barely able to get off my bike (thanks to Rich for helping me with that) before I just laid down on the ground where I stayed for the better part of an hour. Other riders were vomiting and running behind scrub bushes to take care of other matters. As for me, I was just shivering and dizzy and just plain felt awful. The vans shuttled people in to the hotel all day long. Five people went to the hospital for IV' s where it was confirmed that they had a low-level food-borne bacteria. There were some troopers among the group, however, who rode all the way in. Janie Bender from New Jersey, my original riding partner at 6:45 this morning, just came in the door at 7:30 pm. That's over 12 hours riding time! Even the strongest riders, Don and Damien, only averaged 10-11 mph all day long that's how strong and constant the wind was. My friend Paula from Sacramento, CA said (on her way to the hospital at 6:30 am) that her main objective before leaving home was to make it through the whole trip without having to go to the hospital. That's how naive I was -- it never even occurred to me to have that as one of my objectives! Hopefully, this bacteria will exit our bodies as quickly as it arrived and we'll all be back to normal (albeit exhausted!!) by tomorrow. We cross another state line tomorrow, Oklahoma, for a distance of 77 miles. Oh joy, a short day!