 Time to wake up. Billy Idol says get up. I'm not gonna go very far right now. I'm gonna go back to the park where I was last night. It is breakfast time. Beans. It's what's for breakfast. Oh yeah. It doesn't look like much but it's good. Made with beans from Mexico. I carried these things all the way from Baja. Tied in my house for like a year. Alright. Now we are ready. Alright here we go. No crashes. No whammies. No flaties. No headwindies. There were a lot of headwinds yesterday and I'm already seeing the breeze. So I might be in for it again but it is what it is. The goal today is to go about another hundred miles where that will take me. I do not know. You see that tree blowing in the wind? That's not good. People ask me all the time if I get bored riding my bike all day long on these big bike tours and the answer is no. Absolutely not. I love this. There is nothing that makes me feel so alive. You see I like getting up in the morning in a new place, eating some food, getting on my bike and just going and that's what it's all about. I just I just go. I'm riding by this field right here and it smells really good and I think this is some sort of sage. It's not like the sage I see in the deserts of Utah. It definitely smells amazing. It's such a simple thing you know riding bikes. We've all been riding bikes since we were kids and if you think back to some of our best childhood memories, I can guess that some of them are when you took your training wheels off or whatever it was. It's the feeling of freedom and that's what it is. I still have that feeling of freedom now at 40 years old. I get on my bike. I have the wind in my hair and I have the open road in front of me. I have a body that's strong enough to pedal and I just go and I love it. I can ride in the middle of the road. I can ride on the left side of the road. Go back over to the middle right side of the road. It's all good because there's nobody on this road. I love the challenge of bike touring. I love how hard it can be you know to ride your bike all day long in the hot sun. Jeez I mean today was almost a hundred degrees but you know if you're moving, you got wind on your skin. It cools you down and it feels great and then you stop every now and then and you just get to listen to the world and everything slows down and everything is quiet. Sitting on a bike all day allows you time to think and you can think about everything and it's really fun. Some of my best ideas and plans have come from bike tours because I have all day to think about them and sometimes things can suck. Sometimes unexpected things happen and it's a total bummer. Today for example I had a freaking roofing nail in my tire. Ah shit I got a hole. No. Shit. You see this? This is what happens when you ride through cities. I don't get flats very often but I got one today big time and you know what I pull up off the side of the road. It's hot as hell. I whip out all my tools and it allows me the chance to you know learn something new about how to fix my bike and I like that. It feels good to be like okay if something bad happens I got this. I got this under control. Come on baby. And then while I was there another dude rolled up with a flat tire and I get to help him out. I appreciate it so much. Absolutely dude. Peace. Have a great day. Every little moment even when you think you're screwed you never are. You never are screwed. Somebody is always gonna come help you or you're gonna help yourself and you're gonna figure it out and it feels really good to figure things out because that's what you have to do in a bike tour. Every single day you're navigating, you're finding food, you're finding water and by the end of the day you're like wow that felt like two days in one. Oh yeah. That makes everything better done. There was another moment today where I was on a road that was completely blocked by a train. Do you have any idea how long it's gonna be? 40 minutes. And lo and behold some woman who works for the train department rolled up and said it's gonna be a long time. Follow me I will show you the way around all of this. And she was so sweet she even gave me a bottle of water. She was awesome. Let's see if I can get it. Two points. Whoo. You know I'm born and raised in Colorado and I've never seen this part of my own state and it's not even that far from home. It's like 150-ish miles. And even though it's not the picturesque Rocky Mountains, it's still pretty cool. It has some charm to it and I like the the tiny towns that I'm rolling through. This is a funny old town, Merino, Colorado. Not much going on. Small town America definitely has a charm to it. A busted up old historical charm. And I ride through some of these towns and I wonder if anybody actually lives here. Sometimes they look like the zombie apocalypse has rolled through and everybody's gone. I see a lot of random broken down vehicles on the side of the road on these country roads especially. But this one back here takes the cake. That is a Gravitron. That's like an old carnival ride. The one where you get in and it spins around really fast and you suck against the wall. I wonder how many county fairs I think it's been at all over the United States. That right there puts a smile on my face. And the people that are left in these towns are in my experience very friendly and always willing to help. I've never met somebody in a small town who's been a jerk and I've been to a lot of small towns and I like that mentality. You go into a city and people are a little weary of strangers. You're in a small town. They think strangers are cool. Look at all the Spider-Man's. The open road is my happy place. Even a boring flat road with a little bit of headwind. I can find joy in those moments. Bye Colorado. Thank you. Whoa, this road is sticky. What is this? Nebraska. There it is. Time for a happy dance. So that's pretty much all I have to say about that. Bike touring makes me happy. I'm sure I'm going to keep riding my bike like this, traveling by bike for as long as I can. And if I can't ride a bike at some point someday, I'm sure I'll get on an electric bike and keep this rolling because it makes my heart happy. It makes my heart very, very happy to be able to do this. And I realize how fortunate I am that I get to take the time to travel in this manner. And yeah, feeling very, very grateful here in Big Springs, Nebraska, in the Ortega sisters backyard. Buenas noches. Good night.