We woke up early and rode for 40 miles until we found a nice rest stop. We slept for a few hours, and I finished patching up the many thorn punctures on my tube from the day before. It was so hot outside that I had to put my bike gloves back on in order to push the water fountain bar without searing the skin on my hand. After 4pm, we decided to get back on the road again to crank out some more miles, despite the fact that it was still extremely hot outside.
Heat channeled through the metal frame of my bike, through my cranks, and into my pedals. The clips on my shoes conducted the heat from my pedals, and burned little patches on the soles of my feet. It was so hot that I began pulling up on all of my pedal strokes so I could avoid putting pressure on the sole of my foot, where the pedal connected with my shoe. For awhile, I was concerned that the plastic sole of my shoe might melt.
We drank water nonstop, and tried to deal with the heat. After 15 miles, I noticed my thoughts were beginning to get a bit soggy. My balance wasn't quite as good as it should have been. Piper started getting chills.
We saw a construction zone on the side of the road and hid in the shade behind an excavator while we tried to recover. We kept drinking water, but Piper felt ill. Later we found out that it had been another 114 degree day.
We left just before sunset. A hot head wind blew in our faces, killing the few downhills we might have enjoyed.
We pulled into the town of Arlington and ate dinner in an air conditioned diner. We were too exhausted to continue. We found a park and lay down to go to sleep, only to be awakened by the sprinkler system several hours later. We moved to a dry spot, only to be awakened by more sprinklers awhile later. Yet again, we moved to another dry spot, and yet again, the sprinklers came on and forced us to move. On top of that, Piper was experiencing some, er, intestinal difficulties that interrupted what little sleep he might have gotten in that booby-trap sprinkler field. In the following days, he would refer to that evening as the "water fountain poop festival."
