Tuesday, July 21, 2009
36: Western Wear
| Stoker's Log |
| Day Thirty Six |
 |
| 7/21/09 |
| From La Hunta, CO |
| To Pueblo, CO |
| 73.8 miles |
| 13.2 avg mph |
Kyle decided he wasn't up to eating a cinnabun the size of his head, so we skipped the place from last night and had breakfast at The Barista Coffee House instead, which was a perfect way to start our morning.
We then went back to the pharmacy with the Amish romances, and things went much more smoothly this time. Outside, I started talking to a woman who was in town for her daughter's gymnastics competition, and whose car had been severely damaged by that hail storm we barely escaped in Garden City. Our final stop before getting on the road was at a Walmart, where I purchased a hankerchief to cover the deep sun damage I'd gotten from Garden City. I figured it was also part of my indoctrination into the West; when Kyle's mom saw a photo she said I looked ready to rob a stagecoach. I was just trying to fit in with everyone we saw: the strange bathtub cowboy we discovered in downtown La Hunta...
one very aggressive bean mascot...
and a real cowgirl (I hate that term, but you know what I mean) whom we passed on the road to Rocky Ford. Kyle insisted that her dead partner was in the sack on the second horse.
In Fowler I got another excuse to release my inner cowgirl (or whatever). We asked a local for a lunch recommendation as we pedaled by, and she sent us down the road to the Tamarack Grill, which had an adjoining livestock yard.
I wasn't sure I'd be able to order meat with the source so close, but as I should have suspected the menu didn't give us much choice. So I had a delicious hamburger with a side of waffle fries and guilt.
Cowboy culture is great and all, but the most exciting part of my day had to do with something else entirely. Remember how all I wanted to see in Kansas (other than anything besides grass, locusts, and cows) were fields of giant sunflowers? And remember how Kansas failed miserably on that account? Well, guess what they have across the border in Colorado? Giant freaking sunflowers. I should have known.
When we originally planned this trip, we expected to follow the Adventure Cycling Association TransAmerica route for much of the way, but the more Kyle looked at maps the more he went for routes that diverged from it. Today we were intersecting with it again for a few miles, and we hoped to run into other cross-country travelers. The road was still fairly empty of cyclists, but we did happen on an unofficial ACA stop.
It was a hostel of sorts, where the flooring ranged from dirt to shag. It was run by Larry Taylor (the one in overalls) who seemed to own most of main street, which meant he owned most of town. He was very friendly, let us use his bathroom, and would have let us use the hottub too if we'd had the time. We talked cross-country cycling with him and his friends for a little while; my favorite story was about a guy who crossed the country on a penny-farthing bicycle, which will always astound me, especially when I imagine the giant wheel rolling up the Rockies.
We left Boone on the ACA route, which went from a rough back road to a busy four-lane highway, making us wonder if staying on 50 and skipping the official route would have been better. We did, however, get to see some courageous local wildlife: a colony of prairie dogs had dug their homes less than twenty feet from the bustling highway. They showed no fear of the traffic rushing by, but when we approached they scampered back into their homes.
Once again we found ourselves riding near crazy storm clouds, but we were close enough to our destination to outrun them. We had to take an exit ramp to get into Pueblo, which again seemed a little ridiculous for an official cycling route. As we rode toward the bike shop, we saw two very different sides of Pueblo: the rundown downtown where some teenage boys and their rottweilers scared the crap out of me, and the affluent side dominated by towering Victorians on spacious lawns. We finally found Bob's Bicycles:
We were just glad to find a bike shop -- the first in over 400 miles -- but the people at Bob's Bikes went above and beyond. One drove us to our hotel while the other worked late into the night to make sure our bike would be ready to go the next day. They couldn't fix everything, but they did an amazing job with what they had, so that hopefully we can get to the bigger shops in Denver without any major malfunctions.
To make it even better, we finished the day with dinner at Cracker Barrel and a night at La Quinta -- my two favorite places, and more than worthy of an awkward song and dance.
| posted at: 02:06 |
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