Another great day. The first ten miles out of Bozeman weren't much fun as we slogged through the gravel covered shoulder of I-90 up a gradual climb. But once we got to the top, the next fifty miles were a blast.

We had a nice gentle tailwind with a very gradual descent and covered these fifty miles in two hours,

Early morning in ranch country - the train on the hillside seems to be set up mostly for cattle

including a short rest stop to fill our water bottles, remove leg warmers and grab a quick snack.

I was feeling really strong this morning and did several long pulls at 25-28 mph of our short 4-5 member paceline. People kept asking me what I had for breakfast.

I stopped to make a phone call at the second rest

That's me on the right, John from Australia on the left, enjoying a little shade as we eat our lunch

stop and ended up riding on my own to lunch. Unfortunately, the wind or our route direction (probably both) had changed and I now faced a light headwind. I met up with Karl at the lunch stop (around mile 75) and we rode together to the finish.

It was a relatively easy day and we made great time, getting into Columbus just after 1:00PM. The weather was warm, reaching 100 degrees as we pulled into Columbus, but since the humidity is pretty low it hasn't been too difficult to deal with the heat. This will be one of the first days that I haven't felt a little rushed to get everything done in time to get to bed at a reasonable hour. I've got another massage scheduled before dinner and will have time to just relax for a while before going to bed early tonight.

I talked on the phone with a reporter at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer today. For those of you in the Seattle area, look for an article about my ride and fundraising effort in tomorrow (Monday's) paper. They said they are planning to run it as a sidebar to their story about the Tour de France.

Tomorrow we head south out of Montana to Cody, WY. It will be a little longer ride than today, but unless we have strong headwinds, should be another relatively easy day.