Too Tired to Ride

View from Uspallata hotel room.
View from Uspallata hotel, a little tourist town.

More desert scenery

Half way through the day's trip

From Villa Union to Uspallata – 420 miles

To say that we’ve ridden a great deal in the last four days is an understatement. Mac and I headed out at 7AM today for the long haul to Uspallata. I realized I was too tired in the first 100 miles. However, there wasn’t anything I could do. We had to reach our hotel by nightfall. Since it was Sunday the usual café’s we stop at to get a break and a cup of coffee were closed. We found one place at about 150 miles. It helped for about a half an hour then I started to get groggy again. We were in a flat desert on a completely straight road for about 250 miles. The only things to see were the vineyards which went of for hundreds of miles (buy Argentine wine futures, the grapes looked lush). I started to seriously have difficulty riding. My mind was wandering and I couldn’t concentrate. Luckily, just as I was really fading out, I got hit by an insect right in the neck. It was some kind of bee and it stung me hard. The poison really got my adrenalin going for a while. But I again started to make mistakes. I stopped at a green light on a busy highway. I tried to pass a slow truck but forgot to get back in my lane. I pulled over in Mendoza and lay in the grass for nearly an hour. When I realized how much further we had to go I got back on the bike. After about 30 minutes I asked Mac to lead since he had had more sleep the night before. I tried to concentrate on his bike as the desert gave way to the mountains. We began a pretty steep ascent with 70 miles left to go and the sun sinking below the snow-capped peaks. Every time Mac passed a slow truck on the two-lane mountain road I worried. My reflexes and reaction time were way off. The last 30 miles were a blur. When we reached our hotel I didn’t go in Instead I hurried over to a coffee shop and had a cappuccino in the hopes that it would revive me. It didn’t. I snapped a few mountain/sunset pics and went to bed – happy to have made it. I dread looking at the itinerary for tomorrow. Maybe I’ll just settle down out here. I could sell the bike and write poetry, if I only knew how.