Monday, July 20, 2009
35: Coloransas
| Stoker's Log Day Thirty Five |
 |
| 7/20/09 |
| From Lamar, CO |
| To La Hunta, CO |
| 61.5 miles |
| 11.6 avg mph |
The vast majority of today was miserable.
We started early -- too early -- and it was sunny and hot before we knew it, over 100 degrees for much of the day. Colorado persists in resembling flat, vacant, heat-soaked Kansas, so much so that I refuse to call this part of the country Colorado, insisting that we're stuck in a horrible purgatorial region that I christened Coloransas. The bike problems also refuse to go away. We can only use one brake because the other one gets stuck, and we can't coast at all because as soon as we do a horrible, unidentifiable clanking sound starts. Not that we had plentiful opportunities to brake or coast today, since the terrain is still fairly flat and empty, but we'll need to fix the problems before we reach the Rockies.
For hours we rode through endless alfalfa fields in misery. I was exhausted, Kyle was in pain, and we both felt like our brains were melting. Occasionally we amused ourselves in the usual ways, with accents and songs, but then we would lapse into bored and brooding silence. A ladybug landed on me and rode along with us for a while, but it didn't seem to help. We finally reached a delightful oasis: a charming cafe that served scrumptious smoothies.
But even this relaxation was ruined, by another flat tire. I can't believe flats are becoming a daily occurrence. It's enough to drive a person crazy, and Coloransas has more than enough to drive a person crazy already.
We're also getting used to fleeing bad weather surprises every day. When a few clouds appeared off in the distance, we called Kyle's sister for a weather report, and she said the map was clear in our area. Not five minutes later a massive storm appeared. Soon we were riding beneath an expansive, ominous cloud, rain and lightning visible ahead and to the side of us.
We went into a full sprint and sustained it for the fifteen miles of nothingness it took to reach a rest area. I have to tell you, I'm getting really tired of riding for my life. Feeling a hundred times more secure with concrete cover beside us, we sat on boulders and watched the storm approach before taking cover in our respective bathrooms, partly to avoid a chance stroke of lightning, but mostly because there were fewer bugs in there.
The storm passed quickly, as they seem to do out here, and we were able to ride towards town. We stopped at the Forest Service building and talked to a very nice woman who checked the weather for us and sold me an egret pin. (Remember how I was going to collect pins on this trip? Yeah, I forgot for a while too.) We were really upset to find out that the dinosaur fossils and tracks were too far away for us to visit -- we've started talking about making a car trip out west to pick up all the sites that we're missing, so hopefully we'll make it there someday.
I needed to get a prescription filled and had chosen a pharmacy in La Hunta since I knew we'd be passing through well before it closed. I waited in the long line, passing the time by staring in confusion at a rack of Amish romance novels (you heard me right), only to find out that my medicine wasn't ready, and in fact hadn't even been called in. The incredibly unhelpful nurse back in Pennsylvania didn't seem to understand or want to work with the scheduling issues that arise when you're bicycling across the country, so even though I had explained the situation yesterday and given her plenty of notice she hadn't yet phoned it in. When I called the office she was apparently too busy to talk to me, though the receptionist promised it would be in by tomorrow. I started to silently fume, since it meant Kyle and I would have to stay over in La Hunta instead of continuing on to our planned destination. To make it worse, the LaHunta bike shop was closed, so we couldn't make productive use of our time there.
But as we were riding through town in search of a hotel, we found a perfect way to spend our evening: we could finally see the new Harry Potter movie.
We found a hotel and showered in time for a rushed dinner before the only showing of the movie started. We settled on soup and mozzarella sticks at a cafe down the street from the theater. What we ate was nothing to write home about, but the service was great and we were captivated by the bottles of grape-raisin soda and the cinna-buns that were the size of human heads. Kyle plans to tackle one for breakfast tomorrow.
What a difference an enjoyable evening makes. Here we are after the long day, before showers and Harry Potter. (You can also sort of see the deep burn patch on my chest from the day that we didn't have sunscreen.)
And here we are after our evening out, so much happier. The new Harry Potter would have been a good movie regardless, but after spending our days staring at fields and cows and not seeing any summer movies, it seemed like mindblowingly awesome entertainment. It was an excellent end to a rather awful day, and we'll take any reason to smile we can get.
| posted at: 01:29 |
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