El Paso West to Clint, TX. Only 51 miles but the hardest day of the cross-country ride for me. It was St Patrick’s Day and I think a Green Leprechaun got into the works. We started the day at 55 degrees with a 5 mile climb out of the box at 6-8 percent. We had a 35 mile an hour crosswind up higher in the pass we crossed. In the second picture you can see the mountain we climbed up to. We climbed to the base of the mountain and then we headed up into the divide between the two peaks. The third picture shows the wind blowing us to the side where we had to lean into the wind; before that picture was taken and lower down we just had a guard rail to our right and a 1000 foot drop off. Kind of freaky. At the top it dropped in temperature to 28 degrees. We were not prepared for that. As we went down the other side we froze. My core temperature got to such a point that I got the shakes and could not stop. The van that sags us did stop halfway down and we climbed in for a while to warm up before finishing the decent. I never seemed to recover completely the rest of the ride. We also had a headwind the rest of the course. A day to forget. We have had some great days so far so I will forget this one.
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