Sea-to-Sea NA Day 4 A few surprises for the night and day. I was not expecting rain for the next few weeks as we were now in the interior dessert but during the night the wind picked up things started clattering around outside. When I pitched the tent close in (over compensating for the 10yds we had to walk the night before) we ended up near the communications trailer so there was lots of activity to the wee hours. There was also a bright yard light nearly above the tent. All this doesn’t bother me and Rita put in her earplugs and soon fell asleep. What had worried me a little was that there were no eve troughs on the sloped roof above; which meant if it rained we would be under a waterfall. I was up keeping my eye on things, helping picking things before they blew away. It rained lightly and I guess the roof shingles held a certain amount of rain since the water falls never developed but acted more like a tree dripping for quite a while after the rain had stopped. I was ready awaken Rita if it became necessary, but as it was she never even woke up. The route today was a beautiful ride down a river canyon; which got quite deep at times. (I will post pictures on my flickr.com sight but haven’t figured out how to tag it to this blog site. My New Zealand sight comes up, nice pictures but highly applicable now. Maybe my son will come to my rescue, or I’ll get someone here to show me). The second surprise was that it was a short ride with only a few climbs up part of the canyon wall and then right back down again. The temperature was about the same as the day before; bearable in the morning before 8 and increasing steadily to 100F at noon. We arrived at camp just as the support crew was arriving well before noon averaging well over 25kph going mostly down along the river and with a tail wind from time to time. All in all it was a ride to live for. You see we don’t notice the heat until we stop. When you are going along at 35kph the wind keeps you cool. I invited Anne M. to ride with us today insuring her she would be OK on the small hills and we would wait at the bottom if she lagged behind on the down hill. George VK passed us once with a group of 3 other young riders. We passed them again after they dropped a water bottle on a downhill. When they finally caught us some time later he decided to ride with us until we stopped at a crest overlooking the river. The nicest bathroom view Rita had experienced in quite a while. Actually I needed more air in my rear tire, having released some the night before and not blown it up again. Once we came to camp Anne asked the locals where the nearest swimming hole was. We were soon on our way after setting up. Some of the younger riders had already found it by the time we arrived. This was a small river fed lake. Diving into ice-cold water, straight off of the snowmelt, is rather embracing. Thank goodness there were a few areas where the water had a chance to warm up more where we could tread water while it absorbed the heat from our bodies. Even Rita jumped in from the overhand about 5 ft above the water - another first for her. We joined many other riders at the local Wal-Mart; which was close by to adjust our gear requirements; lawn-chairs, cups, towels, sunscreen, cooler clothing etc as we needed. The local store manager was interested in our ride and I told him what it was all about. The business cards we have explain a lot and have web site info on them. Again I don’t know what tomorrow holds but there will likely be a few more surprises.