Wednesday 8/06/05

Still pouring down in the morning. Alex woke up to find himself being dripped on. Both of us were kind of up before 10 but thought that maybe the rain would pass. No such luck. We had to pack the tent up wet, so it picked up all the filth from the floor. All our kit was also soaked. We spent the whole day in the rain. It must have carried on unrelentlessly for at least 24hrs. This is pure Karma. The cosmic balance of plesure and pain. We were blatantly paying for the time we had in Carson/Reno. What should have been an extremly enjoyable day where we were to descend from 8000ft to under 1000ft in 80 odd miles turned out to be a cold and wet ordeal. It could have been worse I suppose, at least we didn't have to pedal. After the first 15 miles we were so cold we were praying for somewhere to stop and warm up. Fortunately the Strawberry Ski Lodge and Cafe came to our rescue. They had a huge open fire and we stood there for ages drinking coffee and drying off. Whilst we were there we met another guy called Don who was on his way from San Fransisco and going to Boston. He was just as cold and wet as us and we stood chatting for a while. He was on his way to meet friends in Carson City and then go out for the night in Reno - it all sounded very familiar and we wished him as much fun as we'd had. We arrived in Placerville fairly late and we searched out the grottiest low budget hotel we could, unfortunately that was full, so we went for the second worst where we had to get a roll out bed for one of us. It was grotty as hell. The Indian guy who ran the place was like 'so you ride across America yes? Why you no fly, it much cheaper and you get there faster?' Now that is how to miss the point completly! We just shook our heads and went to bed.