We had some pretty good tailwinds going into the 2nd rest stop. But right after, we turned into the wind and we had 28 miles to get to lunch. I caught up to Brian, Ivan, and Larry. Brian was pulling and it looked like it was a long pull. I tagged on the back, they were doing about 13 mph. After a little bit of that, I asked them if we could each take short 30 second pulls. We bumped our speed up to around 15 mph. I did my best to encourage everyone and to keep the pace high, we slowed down when people were having trouble keeping up. It was working really well. I have to say, that some of the people on the trip are not comfortable drafting. They'll ride to the side, or they'll ride a couple feet behind. I'm not the greatest at leading a pace line, I never know what pace to be at and sometimes I push the pace too much.These guys didn't have a problem with riding close enough to get the draft. We plugged along for awhile and we reeled in my roommate Walt and the we caught up to Tim. Tim took really long pulls on the front, which annoyed me, but only because I was getting irritable from too much riding without rest days. At some point, within a couple miles of lunch, the road turned and the wind was at our backs and Walt took the pace up to 22 mph which blew apart our pace line. I fell off the back, Larry fell off the back, it was horrible. We regrouped, but after that, they were riding all over the road, the pace was erratic. With 2 or 3 miles to go, I was dropped. Larry got dropped. Luckily, it wasn't far to lunch. After lunch, I noticed there was some metal sticking out of my brake hood,it looked like a little metal pin. Barb (the massage therapist) passed me, but I caught up to her and we rode most of the way into Evanston together. I went to Walmart and she thought I missed a turn. Walmart didn't have what I was looking for, so I tried a sporting goods store right next door, but it was a hunting and fishing sporting goods store. When I got to the hotel, John Lake pulled my shifter apart to fix it. We had it done in about 2 hours, at times it was pouring outside and we were stuck under a small canopy.
"Montpelier To Evanston, WY"
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