No joke. Yesterday's ride from Rapid City to New Castle, WY was extremely eventful. To start off, the first 20 miles were pretty tough, hills around every corner. And the last 2 miles were especially steep, but it was more than worth it when we got to the top and rode into Mount Rushmore. As we were taking pictures and talking to a bunch of people about our cause, some people on the mountain dropped a HUGE banner right next to Lincoln's face (the far right) that said: "America Honors Leaders Not Politicians. Stop Global Warming." as a critique on the current president Barack Obama (a picture of him was also on the banner). It turns out it was Greenpeace and it was awesome. Apparently, no one's ever really done something like that on the mountain before so we were pretty lucky to see something like that.
Lots of the people there were curios about our cause and it was a lot of fun talking to them. Some were cyclists, some cancer survivors, some just inspired. That was really awesome.
The ride leaving the park was awesome too, great downhills. Tons of cars, but that was expected. The last 20 miles of the ride were crazy too. We were riding under the most amazing/scary looking clouds ever and thought it was all well and good. Plus, we had this huge tailwind and were cruising easily at 30mph. Suddenly the wind changed on us almost blowing us over! We heard tornado sirens going off in the distance and could see the beginnings of a funnel forming ahead of us. So, we booked it as fast aswe could into town since we were only a few miles out. If it had gotten any worse, we would have had to seek shelter somewhere. Luckily, we made it to the church safely sans tornado touching down anywhere near us. Plus we got an extremely delicious meal from the church. Man, that food was great.
Today's ride was pretty flat in comparison to the hills we've been seeing. Wyoming is pretty quiet so far, so we'll see how that goes. The ride was a little shorter too (75 miles) so we just played games and talked for most of ride which was fun as usual.