Day 32 McCook to Minden

Today was a great day for cycling. A tailwind! All day long!

Got up at the usual 5:30, but with the time change, it was still pretty dark. That didn't seem to deter most people though from getting lunch and bikes ready and getting breakfast taken care of.

Fred was on sweep duty today, so I left myself at 7:15. It was still fairly dark at 6:30. I had my rear tire go flat again about 10 miles out, by Indianola. This time I found the wire that had gotten in through the rubber and got it out. No more flats after that thankfully.

At that point, Andy Hiemstra (ON) caught up to me and we cycled together the rest of the day. He says one of the differences between this tour and the 05 tour is that people leave way earlier now. In 05 no one left at 6:15ish. But here heat is the problem, so you want to get going while it's still cool. It's well over 90 again today.

Mid section we had a lot of rolling hills. We would get up to 50kph (30mph) downhill, then slow down to 16kph (10mph) going back up. We enjoyed the downhills.

Minden has a big courthouse (pic) built in 1907. The Minden Opera House was built in 1891 and was restored 7 years ago by money donated by the Kellogg's company. They buy a lot of their corn (for corn flakes) from around this area. I took a look inside. Very nice. I saw Erna, Dini, Lavonna leaving there as well (pic).

I got into town about 2:15. Totals for day: 158 klm (98 mi), 5:20 on the saddle, 30.0 avg kph (18 mph)