Day 24
   
   5/21/01
   Mile 2396
   Nobleford, AB
   
   The winds were only about half strength today.  Problem was, the same
   also seemed to apply to me.  I felt normal enough and could move down
   the road ok, but generating large amounts of power for hill climbing
   or whatever seemed harder than it usually does.  I try different things
   to see what will help; power bar, orange juice, bagel, nothing seems to
   work.  I started recalling what I'd had to eat the past few days, and
   it wasn't enough.  Due to weather and various availability snafus, I'd
   skipped the previous day's breakfast, and supper before that, and
   yesterday's supper was minimal.  Too little carbo-loading.
   
   I'm still seeing occasional deposits of Natron, even this far north.
   This is the famous rolling hills of southern Alberta, ranchland
   extending to the horizon.  The accumulator on my altimeter says that
   I've now climbed through a total of over 40,000 feet of hills - taller than
   Mount Everest.  I have doubts as to it's accuracy, and I suspect it reads
   high by 20% or so.  But at any rate, it's been a lot of climbing.
   
   After lunch, and a couple of bananas, I seemed to feel better.  It
   took a while to get all those little molecules into my bloodstream.
   
   I've been watching the back tire; there is a small bubble forming in
   the sidewall, and the end can't be long now.  It's of little concern
   to me since I have two new spares on me, and the bike shop had said "run
   them until you see the cords show through".
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   Question of the day:
   
   Q. How do you train for these long bike trips?
   
   A. Resistance training is one of the pillars of any workout regimen.
   My form of it is to attach a logging chain to the bike and drag a
   large stump.  It thrashes around a bit, but the only thing I have to be
   careful of is the sparks coming off the chain - wouldn't want to start
   a grass fire!  Of course, the stump eventually gets ground down, so I
   periodically have to stop and pull out a new one.  One was so large I
   had to drop all the way down to second gear just to get it out of the ground!
   I would like to have gotten a job where they'd pay me at the same time
   I was doing the resistance training, perhaps as one of those tractors
   that moves jetliners around on the tarmac, but I couldn't find a bike
   that had a reverse gear.
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