Ride Summary

Distance: 100 mi
Climbing: 1296 feet
Descending: similar
Difficulty: hard (length; terrain and weather were great!)
Link to workout in Strava

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Stopped to take a picture of this flag and a fellow came out of the house and smiled and waved and I gave him a big smile and thumbs up. As I was touring, our country is attempting to deport as many foreigners as possible, much to my chagrin.

The sun was with me all day; I have sunburned thighs. These emergency-shopped shorts are a couple inches shorter than my usual, and I rarely put sunscreen on my legs. Guess tomorrow I'll remember to do so? (Spoiler: I did not remember, but there was less sun and less miles for the rest of the days...)

Said goodbye to my feral cat friends after having some protein-powder-enhanced oatmeal for breakfast, and retraced my steps back from the campground for several miles before I started making new progress southeast - fortunately the same direction the wind was blowing. Fortunately the wind stayed mostly with me all day and for the rest of the trip until Bakersfield!)

Found some good trails in Merced - which is always a pleasure after miles and miles and miles of straight ol rural Avenue 26 and Road 19. As it happened, I rolled through Merced in time for lunch - and then had second lunch in Madera. Couldn't really put all the food in but tried hard to stay fueled up, since this ended up being the longest single-day fully loaded ride I've signed up for in memory. I could have stopped at around 2/3 of the way; Madera is a town with many hotels that was my planned spot to check in with my body, consider-the-time-and-remaining-energy, and then make the call. So I stopped for a late lunch and the POWER OF THE MILKSHAKE convinced me to carry on. Today, my butt kinda hates me, but the legs are fine and I'm taking a day mostly off the bike, so hopefully the rest will be healing. I feel like my monthly 200k's have gotten me in the shape that this was even possible and not ill-advised! Good job, past Chris!

There was no flooding anywhere while I rode. But there were hundreds of signs like this which ratcheted up the tension a bit after I took a 10 mile or so detour on my last California tour due to unexpected flooding

All day long, I made good time on mostly good to great roads. Only about half of the roads out of the campground and into Fresno were planned by the route creator; the rest I built off of heatmaps and hope using RidewithGPS, and things were pretty fine. Probably about 10 might-have-preferred-better miles - some of which had no easy alternative - but really only a mile or two of actual "yikes". And half of that was after I arrived in Fresno - where they like to end the bike lane a block or two before the intersection and not resume it until a block or two after! Only on busy streets, of course. But, it's an unwelcome pinch point, especially at mile 99 in a long day.

Today's road closure failed to impress - it was about 50 feet long. I gambled with a couple miles ride and fingers crossed to "wait and see", and won! Fortunately, I could walk around the closure and there was no active work in progress. WHEW. The detour around seemed confusing at best, and probably fairly long and trafficky.

Got to bike into the outskirts of Fresno on some dirt trails right at the golden hour - sunset underbiking for the win! Pulled into my hostel around 6 but it was almost fully dark already...daylight savings has really taken away some easier time on the road! Found some highly rated Tex-Mex and settled in with a FLIGHT OF MICHELADAS. Thirsty man drinks lots; film at 11.

Took a day to recover here - doing some laundry, art museum and library visit and firming up next few days' plans while I eat my way across town, or at least the little district I'm staying in (the Tower District), which is cute and trendy.

Tomorrow, south again!