First off, it’s pronounced Kwenel.

Today’s ride was absolutely fantastic—beautiful, cooler, and faster. The headwinds were still blowing strong, but today, my legs were stronger. Joe, Tesfay, Steven, and I rode out fast and strong pacelining through the first twenty. For the rest of the ride, Tesfay Steven, and now Jon, and I rode together, pushing ourselves hard and getting all that frustration from the past two days out onto the pavement.

We ended up arriving at our final rest stop before the rest of the team, so as Zaid (our sag) headed out to pick up one of our riders who broke his spoke, we manned the fort until our other teammates rolled in. This gave us time to make some fun creations with our food resources.

Soon our whole team rolled in, and we took a nice long break all together.

And that’s when we came upon more horses…

Lance and Steven shared a moment…

And Bryn went picking for goodies in our mix of nuts and crackers:

We pulled in with some beautiful scenery

And even came upon this little fellar:

All in all, this was a great day. My legs are tired which means I worked hard, and our team is growing closer than ever. 6 more days until we reunite with the Rockies. We’re all curious how that will pan out, who will call the shots, and how the team will mesh. I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Until then…