Honestly, the Garmin GPS says, 3074 meter elevation gain, 3164 elevation loss. Seriously, we were mad men on the sixth day of this trip, attacking whatever was thrown at us. But, these are also some big numbers for one day of riding. Jeez.
It was one hell of a day, with some brutal climbs.
This was the view most of the first few hours, just going up, up and up. But, things didn't get much better later, since each downhill was followed by another climb and even the "flat" stretches were just a series of rolling hills. The nice thing was that this was forested national park in a remote part of the planet, with birds, blue sky.. OK, those things don't much matter when you are climbing. This was all about gearing and moving up the mountains.
After almost five hours on the bike, I pulled up last (as per usual) to find Markus and Marco with their bikes already in the van. I was still pumped for the last few kilometers, but decided that having a beer and climbing in the air conditioned van was a much better alternative than getting my butt kicked by two sweaty German guys.
We drove to the closest town and I ordered beer, duck and rice. Oh, the perfect meal after six days on a bicycle riding big mountains.
In this photo, Markus captured me articulating the first consonant of the adjective that described the hills today.
Markus ordered two beers. And we ate and ate.
Now, back in Chiang Mai, we are headed out to dinner at Miguel's Mexican Food restaurant, to have mega calories and margaritas.
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