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The theme for today is: "Boy is it windy in South Dakota". We left the high school this morning head east. The a water stop was at mile 20 and by 9 AM we were having a morning snack at the 25 mile mark. As we left the convenience store, a breeze from the south was starting to kick up. Since we were traveling east, this made for a crosswind on our right hand side. The road soon turned north and the wind became a tail wind for us. When you have a tail wind, you really can't feel it, but you can see the effects of it. In no time, we were moving along at 20 to 25 miles an hour. Even the rolling uphills were easy.
At the 47 mile mark, we had to turn east again and now the tail wind became a cross wind again and we began to
feel how strong it had become. We hit the picnic stop by 11 AM. I was hungry but some folks seemed to be affected by the
increasing heat and weren't very hungry. On a hot day like today, water becomes very important. Cycle America is great on making
sure that we have enough water and sport drink to keep us going. Today they had block of ice in the coolers to supply us with
cold drinking water. The crosswind was so strong, that we rode side by side to block the wind. Sometimes the group was as large
as six. Every mile or so, we would rotate the group on position clockwise. When we would rotate, it felt as if we were the "Blue
Angels" flying in formation. Kinda neat way of keeping your mind off of the work of fighting the wind.
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