Monday 17^th May, Weinhart Hotel, Dayton, Washington

19.00

It turns out I was talking rubbish yesterday. We were in Lewiston and not Clarkston. We had crossed Snake River to get into Lewiston but you needed to cross it again, around a sort of U-bend, to get into Clarkston, which we found this morning, after a mazy cycle through some back streets. Same difference. Both smell of cabbage and have few redeeming features.

Having read the guide book, I knew today was going to be quite a difficult day. 70 miles with a long, 12 mile uphill near the beginning and another 1500 foot climb near the end. Still nothing we hadn’t seen before. ( Hah!)

A nice flat start for about ten miles then the first climb. Gentle at first then a steep increase in gradient for the last five miles. It was just at this point that the suntan lotion I had lovingly applied in the morning started to drip down into my eyes and made seeing virtually impossible. There followed a period of stop-start walking and cycling while wiping my eyes with the back of my sweaty cycling gloves. The only consolation I had was listening to, if I may say so, some very creative obscenities echoing down the valley.

One day when I have retired from public life I am going to write a book about hills. It will study them from every conceivable angle. There will be charts covering hill height, cyclist height gradient, camber, wind velocity, cyclist velocity, cyclist precocity, cyclist weight, gear ratios, isometrics, biometrics, tide tables and currency fluctuation. Sheahan on Hills will make Duckworth Lewis look like the two times table. And you know what? It will be useless, completely useless. Because in the end it’s how you feel on the day and little things like the suntan lotion getting in our eyes. That’s why I hate hills.

Once at the top we pressed on. It was then that we found that we had a slight misunderstanding between crew and navigator regarding the day’s destination. Mike (quite reasonably) had thought it was Richland and penciling in some place well beyond Dayton as our refreshment /refueling stop. By the time we discovered the confusion we had done the first ball-breaking hill and were beyond the lovely sounding (and looking) Pomeroy with over 36 miles to go and me with hardly anything left to drink.. Nowhere else to stop, the temperature and humidity were rising rapidly, another big hill coming and the wind was getting up. Oh how I laughed!

We staggered along and got there in the end. Just before the last hill we came across another hazard. One that we are meeting more and more frequently as our journey nears its end. Other cyclists. These usually come in two forms. Solo cyclists and pairs. The solo cyclist are nearly always barking and each one seems to try and outdo the last one with their tale of derring-do. “This is my 85^th time across”; “I’m cycling around America with my eyes shut”; “I’m going west to east, having a leg amputated (not sure which yet!) and cycling straight back.” .

Couples are not quite as bad but they still need watching.; “He’s Frodo and I’m Sam” is not a good conversation opener in my book.

Today we met a couple of Costa Ricans. Really jolly people, very friendly and full of fun. Don’t get me wrong . I love Costa Rica. It is one of the most peaceful and politically stable of all South American countries. In fact I have the Costa Rican flag tattooed in a place where only my loved one can see it. But when you’re hungry, thirsty and tired, with sore eyes and one big hill to go, you (I mean I) really don’t want to be comparing the merits of different types of pannier bags or posing for snaps with anyone. I would love to meet fellow cyclists in the bar or hotel at the end of the day and chat about our experiences, but out there I just want it over. Mike is the opposite. He loves looking at the other people’s bikes, what gear they have and taking photos. He says the last thing he wants to do is meet them in the bar in the evening and I see his point. There you go.

We got to Dayton at three and it is a lovely little town. Very small but with a very attractive main street and a relaxed feel about the whole place.

We stopped at the Manila Bay Café on the way in. A really strange, but oddly wonderful , German/ SE Asian place run by a lugubrious but friendly German guy and a more lively Vietnamese. All I wanted really was beer, which they had an excellent stock of, but Mike had Bratwurst and Cheese soup so to enter into the fusion fun, I had some purple yam ice cream which was pretty good and turns your tongue an amazing colour.

We're now in the Weinhart hotel, a very nice antebellum sort of place and just what an intrepid extreme sportsman like myself deserves at the end of the day. One final little sting, though. I managed to burn my eye-lids today ( I had my Ray Charles's on but the sun ingeniously found a tiny little gap at the top.) Luckily Mike now travels with a bewildering array of unguents and I am literally aloe vera'ed up to the eyeballs Seems to work too.