Saturday, March 05
Hospet to Harihara Davanagere – 130 K
The hotel in the next town (Harihara) canceled all our rooms so the tour was forced to find us a different place to spend our night tonight. We have an additional 11 K to ride and will be spending the night in a town called Davangere. Of course our first collective thought was… “does that mean we have 11 K LESS to ride the following day??” The answer was NO! Bummer!
Our friend Allen had a fall a few days back on the BIG climb – he broke three ribs and is heading home from here. We all said our farewells to him before leaving this morning. Allen is the oldest member of our group in his prime at 75 years young. Here’s me and Allen just before I got on my bike:
Would you like to guess what is going on in the picture below??? If you said, “using a bus/traffic to harvest seeds/grain” you would be correct! Haha! We saw this several times today and I caught a picture of a bus driving over the piles of stalks which were carefully place across the state highway. The cars, trucks and busses crush the stalks and once they are sufficiently broken apart, they start sifting and separating the seed/grain from the chaff… all ON the road. Eventually they gather their grain/seed piles alongside the road (of course!) and then leave the chaff along and in the road. Innovative, wouldn’t you say? The only ones who think twice about it are us visitors who find it an exercise in creative thinking to figure out WHY they were doing what they were doing! J
Lunch was in a lovely shady coconut grove today – here’s a few of the gang:
Jan decided to ride the lunch truck to the hotel and I was up for more riding so I set out on my own after lunch. Many of the ladies ride solo without difficulty and I was willing to give it a try today. Henry, the owner of the tour group was the sweep and he wouldn’t be far behind if anything came up, so I was off. The road was good and I was able to pick up the pace. I traveled quickly and the kilometers went by quite fast, but it was hot and getting hotter. I got held up for a bit in a small town when I discovered that the route I needed to take had a festival in the middle of it! It was pretty crazy and the kids just swarmed around me… finally a man offered to run blocking for me through the crowd until I broke free and could ride again. Below is a picture of the festival from the back… BEFORE I tried to make my way through:
Like I said, the afternoon was getting hotter but there was a wind that helped keep me a little cooler… albeit a headwind at times. Only once, on a short but steep hill, did I find myself in the still, hot, windless air and looked down at my Garmin for a glance at the temperature… 106.8 degrees!!! Once I crested the hill, the wind was back and the temps hung around 103/104 for the remainder of the ride. I stopped a few times; once for electrolyte replacements and cooling shade, another time for a cold Coke and more of that wonderful shade.
I arrived at the hotel without incident but I was sure dirty! I started this day by sharing a picture of me BEFORE this ride and I’m a firm believer that everyone needs at least one “AFTER the ride” picture so here’s mine. I earned every bit of my sweaty helmet hair, my dirt encrusted face, arms and hands, the mud and crud on my legs, my sun-parched lips… even the stain on my shirt! Yep! J
