Today is a day off in the pleasantly surprising town of Boise. We wandered into the hotel breakfast with a blank-check sort of mentality… a free day!
For me, the day started with a trip to a local laundromat. I don’t recall being in a laundromat since my days in college at Colorado State. $3.25 for a wash and $0.25 per 6 minutes of dryer time. Time seems to move in slow motion while clothes tumble behind round glass doors and the machines meld into a constant cacophony of industrial background noise. A two mile round trip would be the only miles I put on the bike today.
With freshly clean clothes, I spent time meandering about town – through Boise State University, along the Boise River (where floating downriver is a popular summer pastime), to the Boise Art Museum (BAM!), and to the Idaho state capitol building. A very clean and welcoming city, with newly constructed blocks alongside historic brick buildings, in a picturesque mountain river valley. A lot to like, which might explain why Boise is one of the fastest growing cities in the country.
The day was capped off with a nice dinner at a downtown Italian restaurant with several of my riding companions, each of us talking about our various travel stories and experiences. We’ve come to discover we all have quite a bit in common, yet so much that we can learn from each other. The pleasure of cycling combined with an epic goal has united us in ways that are difficult to describe – a psychology experiment of sorts. I look forward to continuing the journey.
Day 10 will feature a relatively easy 54 miles to Mountain Home, ID.
~Dan
Domagala.Bike 
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