Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Day 36: La Junta, CO to Pueblo, CO

After a delightful stay in our little hotel room, we left to get our ridiculously large cinnabuns.

We immediately thought better of this idea, and opted to ride about town and find something else while we waited for Safeway to open.

First we passed the theater, which had awesome prices on both tickets and food.

Then normal town stopped, and we rode past Kelly's guns.

Since we were still in vacation/seen a movie mode, we stopped at The Barista, the awesome coffee shop in town.

After much time reading magazines and enjoying comfortable seating we finally made our way back out to the Safeway. Fortunately, it was only a few blocks away and Jillian was finally able to get the prescription worked out.

Then it was off to the West for real, with just a little bit less than seventy miles to go before Pueblo. We were really excited to be getting to Pueblo, the magical city with bike shops, hotels, and best of all, a La Quinta. We'd also be reconnecting with the Transamerica trail, which we hoped would let us find more cyclists and simplify navigation.

Outside of town we started seeing sunflower fields. Sunflowers are the state flower of Kansas, so we'd been very excited to see the fabled fields of sunflowers. The best we'd been able to do was a couple in a planter outside of a McDonalds in Dodge City. Jillian stopped for pictures.

Our next stop was in Rocky Ford, at a little gas station. On our way out of town we passed a man on a horse. He was leading another horse, which was carrying a large sack. Naturally, we tried to figure out what was inside the sack. Jillian guessed fruit (Rocky Ford is the Sweet Melon Capital of the world). I guessed a body. You decide.

There isn't really a lot to do in this part of Colorado. I entertained myself with two games. First, I'd study the water works extensively. There were hundreds of miles of concrete pathways with sluice gates in various states. Water was usually moving and it was interesting to see where gravity moved the water and where it was pumped. As I said, not much to look at in this part of the state.

We also counted train cars. Counting one hundred and twenty car long trains takes a good deal of time, and since you can't talk over the sound of the train anyway, it was a good way to kill time. Most of the trains seemed to haul coal.

After another stop in Manzanola, just down the street, we rode on to Fowler, where we asked for advice on where to find lunch. We were directed to the Tamarack Grill, which shared a building with Fowler Livestock.

Food was fantastic. The building also offered wonderful picture opportunities.

We'd purchased the black handkerchief back in Lamar, due to the terrible sunburn Jillian received on her chest while making up miles on a cloudy day in Garden City, KS. My mother wondered if we were going to be robbing stagecoaches next.

Further west we passed through what Google Maps reported was Hamlet, CO, but we failed at finding a sign.

At the junction of CO-209 and US-50 we turned North to go to Boone, which we hoped would have a gas station or something. There was nothing. Except then, on our second pass, we saw a funny looking sign outside a building.

Naturally, we had to stop. There we met Larry Taylor and friends (Larry's on the far right).

This was a kind of crazy stop. We went into the half hostel, half residence, half everything else on the wall, and used the bathroom. The building was kind of being remodeled. It kind of had dirt floors. Interesting place. Apparently Larry's been trying to get listed as a place to stay on the ACA maps for some time, but he's been unsuccessful. He told us stories of the town (and how he's bought most of the buildings, since no one else will), and told us of all the cyclists that have passed through. We signed his guest book, impressed by the number of cyclists we apparently hadn't been seeing. We looked for Rupert's name, but alas, nothing.

Although Larry was willing to let us spend the night, we chose to ride on to Pueblo and try to get in to a bike shop to have some work done. Nor far down the road, US-50 and CO-96 joined up. The shoulders on CO-96 had been awful, and we were hopeful that they'd get better, and causing us to think that maybe the ACA route should travel down US-50 instead of CO-96. But not much farther on the road became a four lane limited access highway. Traffic started moving quickly, we couldn't really talk to each other, and the land looked as barren and desolate as anything we'd ever seen. The prairie dogs were oblivious.

But, even though we were on four lane highway, the signs made it clear that we were one a bike route. Before things got really hairy, we exited for CO-96, following the signs, and rode through town. Although we didn't really get to see downtown, the parts of town that we did see weren't very impressive. Everything felt dry, which we didn't care for. Part of the problem might have been that we were entering our first city since St Louis and simply weren't used to deal with traffic lights or cars.

We found our way north through town, leaving the ACA route again, to Bob's Bicycles, on the corner of Elizabeth and 25th.

We weren't too excited with the way the building looked, but understand how desperate we were. We'd ridden hundreds of miles without being able to coast. That made us hurt, since there wasn't even an opportunity to stand on downhills. Our back brake wasn't working, meaning we had to be really careful about stopping. And then, just as we entered Pueblo, our shifting started to fail, and I couldn't get the bike into some of the gears. We felt like we were just going to fall apart. We went in.

Inside we found the best customer service we ever found at a bike shop. There were two people working inside, both of whom seemed to really know their stuff. We explained what was wrong, and they thought we might be having bottom bracket trouble. Fortunately, they also thought they had parts. Quite grateful, we asked directions to the La Quinta, and they offered to drive us, trailer and all.

Though it felt weird to check in at the La Quinta without our bike (but with a trailer), we were so happy to stop. Although we hadn't figured out how to get there, Colorado Springs was only fifty miles away. Denver felt like it was less than a two day ride away. Plus, we were at a La Quinta with a Cracker Barrel in the parking lot. Could traveling cycling life get better?

That evening brought crazy storms. But we were already at the La Quinta, having outrun the crazy Colorado afternoon weather for the first time ever. We slept like babies.

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