Day 58

7/12/16 Eureka, NV to Austin, NV, about 68 miles.  The day started off very well.  I was moving quickly for the first 25 miles.  Then the headwinds started.  At first they weren't so bad.  I got up the first small climb of the day, and met two Norwegians going from LA to NY on the descent.  They were fixing a flat.  While chatting with them, holding my bike, a huge gust came that blew so hard that I lost balance trying to hold my bike up and fell over with my bike into the street.  After we chatted for a while longer, I kept going.  The winds had picked up considerably, and they were coming from straight ahead.  I was going on gently sloping uphill terrain at below 4 mph.  It was exhausting.  I was relieved when I finally got to the big mountain at the end of the day because it meant that the mountain would block the wind.  And it did help, although it was an exhausting climb given my state going into the climb.  The mountain was double peaked, with a second climb after the first descent, but finally I made it to the top of Austin Mountain, the final significant climb on route before the Sierra Nevadas in California.  That felt great.  I ended the day in Austin, a mountain town just a few miles down from the peak of Austin Mountain.  I met a guy named Gary there, who is walking across the country from Point Reyes, just north of San Francisco (he plans to take two years, though will stop in the winter to do something else and then go back to where he left off next year).  I'm camping in a city park tonight, with one week left until my planned arrival in San Francisco.