Easier (?) day today, Mitchell to John Day OR

Well, after our extra long day yesterday when we almost hit a century, plus climbed a few thousand feet, today's route was scheduled to be for an easier day.  69 miles to the next town with hotels, John Day, Oregon.  

A really tough start to the day - but rewarding afterwards


We started our morning from Mitchell with a brutal, six mile climb out of the valley, which had us sweating up the side of the mountain towards the top.  Once we got there, we were rewarded with a fantastic trip down the other side, for about the next 32 miles, mostly downhill, ending up in a beautiful gorge called "Picture Gorge."  We took pictures.

  
Picture Gorge - isn't it well named?


It was a really tough way to start the day, but the reward forr ealy morning struggles were good. We stopped in a tiny spot called Dayville (John Day was a hero in this area, towns, rivers, parks are all named after him.  I'll have to Google him later).  We stopped at The Dayville Cafe, a really nice lunch spot and had a fantastic lunch.  After stuffing ourselves Pat had their featured Pie, but Jerry and I could only look on in amazement.  So we bought slices to go and packed them for later.  The two Cafe ladies couldn't have been more fun and we enjoyed them very much.  I'm sure they haven't had many customers for a while.  We signed their map, like other visitors from all over have, and were on our way.
Dayville Cafe was a great, friendly stop


Like I said yesterday, sore butt has been plaguing my days since we began.  Unfortunately this afternoon the problem went from bad to worse as two wounds opened up on my back-side and made it dern near impossible to even sit on the seat.  We were having such a good day, and my butt problems threatened to shut it down.  While limping into John Day, we stopped to rest at a small town and Jerry looked up leather saddles (like I should have bought before I left) and found one from an online seller who promised to ship this to our upcoming hotel.  It turned out that this retailer is located in Portland, so UPS service to John Day is supposed to be overnight.  We will find out tomorrow whether this is true.  After we checked into our hotel Jerry went to the local pharmacy and found 3M Tegaderm, which is basically a second skin and is applied to open wounds.  We are hoping that the combination new saddle and Tegaderm will hold up and keep us moving.  

Let's see if this works as advertised.  And holds up on a ride


Unfortunately this means we need to put in an extra day to wait for the new saddle, and it won't hurt to let myself heal just a little before "saddling up" yet again.  At the very least, a new seat will at least change the spots where it sits on my backside, giving relief to the old spots (hopefully without starting new ones).  We'll just have to wait and see.

Oh yeah, we got contributions to World Bicycle Relief this week from Mike Ryan and Abby and Bryan Hoffmann.  Thanks everyone for contributions to this worthy cause.  And it was International Bicycle Day yesterday!   https://give.worldbicyclerelief.org/dinowheels 
Location: John Day, OR 97845, USA

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