Left Jeff City Church hostel early. Ate refrigerated overnight oats for brekky; V likes hers room temperature. Mozzies in the morning we’re once again awful. Who could live here!? Long scrubby rolling hills in a.m. were supposed to be easy but were more work than anticipated. Passed a dead rattlesnake in the bike lane with 3-4 rattles, maybe 1.5” in diameter and maybe 2.5’ long or so, that looked to have been run over by a bike, not flattened by a car. (Saw 5-6 more dead rattlesnakes throughout the day that had been flattened by cars, all pretty tiny though.) Rode with Bill and Greg early in the day, until Sweetwater Station rest area where I stopped, but V, who was ahead of me and I THOUGHT in hearing range (Greg was in view ahead of her, Bill was immediately behind me), didn’t see me and Bill didn’t tell her I stopped. She stopped too though to toilet Maui, on the OTHER side of the rest area, and I never knew. When I left I never saw her, had no idea she’d stopped, and I hit the hammer to catch up to the group whom I thought were all ahead of me. She didn’t know I’d stopped and never saw me leave and when she didn’t see me somehow she thought I was way behind and she was worried so she rode BACK TOWARD JEFFREY CITY looking for me. She was scared and crying and thinking I was dead by the side of the road somewhere, but when she didn’t see me after a mile and a half she knew I couldn’t have been that far back. She worriedly called my friend Orlando to ask for the website link for the tracker that I’m carrying for us that updates every 30 mins (for some reason she didn’t have the link) but he didn’t have it. But while she got chewed up by mosquitos she looked back through her various text threads, was able to find the tracker link (fortunately she had some limited cell data service!) and she was able to see I was ahead of her and she the started riding back the correct way. I got to the top of the hill, having pushed hard all the way up as I tried to catch everyone, and I stopped at Beaver Rim and saw Bill leaving as I arrived; he told me V was behind me, having stopped at the rest area to toilet Maui. What!?!? I called her and she didn’t answer so I texted her where I was and that I was waiting for her and she replied “okay” almost immediately. But when she got to me about 20-30 mins later there was a Canadian couple there at the viewpoint/lookout chatting with me and other than a hug we didn’t get to talk for a minute or two about what had happened. I had no idea how emotional she was and had been, how scared, and when the Canadian couple left and I wanted to talk to V, she wasn’t in a place to talk about it. She just wanted to ride, so we did. It was an absolutely gorgeous ride from that Beaver Rim down a long, steep, glorious downhill for about 5 miles, and later through a really beautiful remote valley with a lot of deep red rocks and steep cliffs reminiscent of Arizona or Utah. But V was still emotional and not talking to me so it was a crappy ride despite the beauty. I was having a slow afternoon because of a sore butt, and I needed to stop a couple times for sunscreen, but V was both emotional and in a rush to get to Lander because of the lack of shade and the afternoon low 80’s heat so we rode separately for nearly 20 miles when I lagged behind her. It was only later that night I learned how scared she’d been that something catastrophic had happened to me when we were separated earlier in the day; I felt terrible. I just assumed that either she’d heard me yell out or seen me signal that I was stopping, or that Bill had told her when he passed her since he was immediately behind me when I stopped. Nope. Anyway, when we got to Lander we went to Gannett Peak Sports (the Lander bike shop) to get Chamois Butter, and an employee (owner?) Ed greeted me warmly and kindly offered me free ice cream bars and beer, and asked it we needed any work done. I had a nice chat with Ed about my having been there in 2010 and how I clearly remembered him…he’d been the only one that could fix the squeal in my brakes on that trip and I’d stopped at shops all across the US!! V and I then walked to Gannett Grill since everything else was closed and each got a portobello mushroom sandwich…mmmm. Bill and Greg joined us. We all went to the Holiday Lodge motel, got a decent low-budget room, did sink laundry which dried outside nicely draped over chairs on the hot 87 degree day. We’d planned a city park camping (it’s pretty nice in the Lander park!) but after our earlier emotional day we both wanted a motel so we could chill in a bed with AC and get a shower and relax. And…this is probably too much information, but hey, it’s a LONG bike ride and we like to keep it real here…we had an end room and there was a big hedge behind it, so when we laid naked on the beds with saddle sore healing cream rubbed all over our painful areas and our legs spread wide open to allow maximum airflow, we could still have the curtains open for a view and sunlight, because no one was around to look in!! Self care is important, folks! You do what you gotta do to ride again tomorrow.