 This right here was my home last night. This is the Ortega sisters backyard. So it was a good spot. It was a full moon last night. The train was going by constantly, but it was cozy. There's the train that kept me up all night. I can't imagine living in a town like this. The train goes by every like 15 minutes and just blasts its horn. I bought a couple eggs at a gas station last night. All right, I'm packed up and ready to go. They say it's gonna be about 101 degrees today. Everybody's been talking about it, which I don't know if there's that much of a difference between yesterday being 95 and stay 101, but we're gonna find out. Stay hydrated, wear your sunscreen, folks. Let's do this, no crashies, no whammies. And I mean it this time, no flaties. All right, so once again, I don't know exactly where I'm going, but I do know I wanna ride about 100 miles. And it looks like that might take me to a town called Gothenburg, which is one of my favorite towns in all of Sweden. And the Swedes call it Jöttebori, so we'll have to see how Nebraska and Gothenburg stacks up to the beautiful Swedish city of Gothenburg. Good morning cows, how'd you sleep? Not sure if eating all that food was a good idea, but I'm riding 100 miles and it's 100 degrees out, so I think I need, it's a pancake, you know what I'm saying? Can I fill up some water bottles? Cool, is that over here? Thank you, your lifesavers. Hey, wanna eat your food there? It's gonna be hot, I'm going across Iowa. So I started in Denver. You crazy fitness people. Yeah, I'm a crazy fitness person. It's all good, babe. Three miles to Gothenburg, it is 10 to 55 AM. Should really be 9.55, but the time chain screwed me. So it's gonna be a long day, but I'm liking this road, big shoulder, we're gonna make it. There is just enough headwind to make pedaling pretty difficult. Riding on a flat road might seem easy, but it's not really, I'd much rather go up and down hills. And I think the worst part about headwind is that it's just loud in your ears. Like you have no sense of peace, it's just like west to east. They're doing the opposite today. Oh man, let's see if this works. I don't feel like it. Let's try this one. Well, we might be lucky here, all right. Oh, I feel so good. That's pretty nice. I've been complaining a lot today about the headwinds, but you know what? At least I get to ride my bike all day. That's all I have to do is pedal and ride my bike. No matter how hot, no matter how much headwind, all I gotta do is pedal. And that's pretty darn cool. It's easy to start complaining when things are hard, you know, it happens a lot in our day-to-day lives. We're like, oh, this sucks. Why am I doing this? And then you realize, you know what, I chose to do this. I chose to be out here. I've chosen a life where I ride my bike a lot. And not every day is tailwinds. You know what I'm saying? If every day was tailwinds, that would just be boring. It'd be too easy. You know, you gotta have these days to really appreciate the good ones. The breeze feels really nice under a tree, not when I'm riding straight into it. Today, I'm riding a road I've never ridden on. I'm seeing a part of my country I've never seen. There are definitely more positives about this situation than negatives. Pretty much the only negative today is the headwind. Everything else is pretty darn cool. And if you can go through a day and only have one negative, I think you're winning. Since I am in a park and there are swings right here, I might as well get on a swing. Swings bring me back to childhood happiness. I need a little break from that damn bike. Swings are much more comfortable. I am just avoiding the next 60 miles in the hot headwind. Time to get back on the bike. No more slacking. Flags, please go the other way, please. I am so excited to see this Casey's gas station. This is my favorite gas station chain in the world. Not that it's really better than any other gas station, but I just have good memories going to these places in the Midwest and they have soft serve ice cream. Bad news, ice cream machine is broken. It's probably a good thing because I still have 40 miles to go. We'll save ice cream for the end of the day. The heat has been the last thing on my mind today. All headwind all the time. But now that I stop and I sit, it is damn hot. I'm also sitting against a brick wall, the man. I was just singing a song to myself that I learned in Nepal, going up and down the Himalayas, and the porters would sing a song that goes like this. Resham fi dee dee, resham fi dee dee. Sometimes up hill, sometimes downhill, resham fi dee dee. It's kind of fitting for today. Sometimes it's up, sometimes it's down. Sometimes it's headwind. Sometimes it's tailwind. Sometimes it's no wind. It's gotta keep moving forward. A nice tree, one of my peoples is food. Give me all of the food. This is the happiest I've been in a long time. I have been dreaming about these beans. Oh yeah, I am so excited. You wanna see how I wash my nasty ass clothes after a day like today? Clothes, washing machine. Oh yeah, there is my drying rack. When you're out in the West, things dry really easily, but now this is technically the Midwest and it's pretty humid. So we'll see if it dries tonight. If not tonight, I'll tie it to my bag tomorrow and the wind will dry it. This is my favorite part about being in the Midwest, fireflies. They are magic. We don't have these in Colorado. I mean, a bug that glows. Come on now, that's pretty rad. This is the only safe place from the mosquitoes and I still have a view of all the beautiful fireflies. This is a pretty good spot. So today, wow, what a day. It was probably one of the toughest days I've ever had on a bike tour and it wasn't because of the train. It was because Mother Nature wanted to blow like crazy. It was pretty much windy from the very start of the day to the very end of the day and wind is just hard. There's no other way to put it. Like it just makes you go slower. It's loud, it's distracting and it just really does a number on your mind and your body. It is really muggy. I feel like I'm in Costa Rica right now. I would sleep naked if I wasn't at like a family campsite but I'm not gonna do that. Onward toward Raghbrie. Thank you Mother Nature. Even though you tested me, thank you for another beautiful day on planet Earth.