Units of Measure

As you will see, riding a bicycle across the US is kind of a crazy thing to do.  Those who haven't done much bike touring probably wonder what goes through a cyclist's mind.  I kind of like to think of it as "Zen and the art of cycling philosophy".  So today's topic is units of measure.  In general people have a hard time grasping large numbers.  As one gets older, it gets even harder to deal with large numbers, so the obvious thing to do is to define units of measure that are a lot bigger than the typically used ones.  For example, astronomers define a new unit, an AU, that equals about 93 million miles.  I'd like to propose a "BogusBasin" unit that can be used in many contexts.  For those of you who aren't close to Boise, Idaho, Bogus Basin is the ski area that is 15.25 miles north of Boise and 3200' higher.  So today was a pretty difficult day.  We had just under 3 BogusBasins of elevation and almost 7 BogusBasins of riding today, so it was a pretty hard day.  Fortunately, Gayle was there with cold drinks and vine-ripened tomatoes for lunch at Gorge Creek and then met us at the tops of the two summits with Gatorade and punch.  Thanks Gayle!  Here's some pictures from today:

Idyllic Cabin

Paul clears the second tunnel after Newhalem

Hey, the sun is shining at Rainy Pass!