Headin’ into Colorado!

Colorado is by far one of the most beautiful places I’ve been to. I was really sad when we left CO to go into UT (even though I’d find UT to be awesome as well).

Eastern CO was still pretty similar to Kansas – there were many grain elevators and the heat was on. It was early in July and the group wanted to make it into Pueblo on the 4th of July in order to see the fireworks. So we decided on our second Colorado day to keep riding into Pueblo instead of stopping in Ordway – we rode 120 total that day! On our way we passed these train cars that seemed to be abandoned on the track. The cars went on for miles and miles, through towns..for like a dozen miles.

That was pretty early in the day, and by the time we’d gotten to Ordway we were pumped to get into Pueblo. On the way in we saw some wild prairie dogs scattering about on the side of the road; it doesn’t really sound too exciting but it's the first time I’d seen these guys out in the wild (a very similar experience to when I got excited to see squirrels when I first came to the states).

We had a great time in Pueblo – we stayed in a hotel, walked around town a lot, got to see the fireworks at night, all in a town of over 100,000 people which is pretty much the most populated town we’d gone to. We had a rest day the next day, which meant we all ran around and took care of errands, visited local bike shops, etc. It was really hot outside so in my case there was a lot of hotel hanging out and tv watching (we don’t get to do this much anymore so it was nice).

The day after the rest day we were set to go into Cotopaxi. We had to climb up over 8000 feet, our first time making climbs to these elevations. The climb was as beautiful as it was challenging – my body wasn’t used to such high elevations so while I would be climbing normally at a lower elevation, now my heart was racing at speeds as slow as 4mph. I couldn’t even drink water and pedal at the same time – I would have to stop under some shade, catch my breath, drink, then keep going. You could definitely tell your body was having to work much harder due to decreased oxygen levels.

The descent from there was soo beautiful. I even had this doe gallop like 10 feet away from me on the side of the road, cut in front of me, then keep galloping towards a mountain on the other side. It was awesome and was one of the things that started my love for Colorado. Here’s a vid I took during the descent.

 

The ride into Cotopaxi that day was pretty nice – winds weren’t a problem and it was relatively flat with some small rolling hills. I was a little nervous this day since I didn’t grab any lights for my bike and I was running short on time to be able to get  to camp. Luckily I was able to speed over in time before dark. The areas around Cotopaxi were a little different than in the video from the descent – it looked more like desert. There was a cool small river going by the road that also went through our campsite that looked like the water was a gunmetal blue color. Soo pretty. We also got a beautiful red sunset that day.

The next day we rode into Salida, one of the cooler towns out of the whole trip. It was a very alternative, artsy kind of town – and also expensive. At this point I was trying to find a Colorado jersey (because CO is so awesome) and went into this store called Absolute Bikes and got them to give the group 10% off. I got this really pretty orange Monarch Pass jersey since we would be going over the pass the next day. After some Mexican food in a local restaurant and watching the world cup, we started making our way up to Monarch Mountain – the highest we would climb throughout the whole trip…

 

On the next blog post coming very soon! :)

Windy Kansas

Kansas started out with a bang. The first city we went to was Pittsburg, where we got a lot of hookups: first we got a yummy free lunch buffet at a place called Wheat State Pizza, got to stay at a nice school, and had local people in an MS group make dinner for us. We met a lady that had MS at the pizza place; she had a Yorkshire Terrier as a service dog, which really surprised me since you don’t usually see service dogs this small. She knitted red, white, and blue angel pins and gave one to each of us so we could wear them on our ride. After lunch we settled into a local school and listened to her touching story and battle with MS. You can see her popping a wheelie on her motorized wheelchair in BUSMS Episode 5. It’s always inspiring to see someone who is so cheery and determined despite such adversity.

A couple days later we would ride one of our first centuries into Cassoday! It sounds like a lot, but Kansas was getting flat by this point so it wasn’t too horrible. Here’s a video I took somewhere in eastern Kansas. You can tell it’s pretty flat but super windy, which makes riding so much harder.

 

The eastern side of Kansas has lots of open grasslands with cows in ranges and feedlots, but once you start heading more to the west the views turn more into endless wheat fields all around you.  So basically it’d go from this

     to this   

There weren’t many trees so you could see for long distances all around you – one of the ways to tell you were getting close to a town was from seeing faraway water towers. You would see them and think you’d be close but it’d take sooo long to get to them.

The winds at first were pretty mild but as we kept pressing on they kept getting more intense, culminating in one particular day being a little dangerous - the day we were riding into Leoti. That morning we decided to have a 25mi day instead of a longer one that was already scheduled. This brought much delight to everyone since we were all tired from biking 120 miles into Scott City the day before – another century! Anyway, during our ride to Leoti the wind gusts went up to almost 40mph! These were crosswinds that were powerful enough to push a couple of our cyclists off the shoulder. Add to that a ton of semis (we were riding through Kansas right in the middle of harvest so there was a lot of transport going on) that would suck you into the road as they zoomed by and push you back as they rode past you and you have a scary combination of forces pushing you all over the place in a small shoulder. We were all pretty happy it was a short day so we didn’t have to deal with that for too long, but it was pretty scary indeed.

Aside from that most of Kansas was pretty flat and uneventful, and people were very hospitable and friendly. One day Rose and I were biking to the park in Nickerson when this one woman called us over to say hi and talk to us about how much faith she had in God. While she got into a few weird details about her devotion (her family’s death would not bother her as long as she had faith), she was super nice, wished us a safe ride, and said she would pray for our safety.

All in all, Kansas was a nice state to go through: we got to ride through some beautiful open grasslands, drank wine as a group while we watched the sunset in Scott City, got a couple centuries done, met some nice people…if only it wasn’t so windy!

To close it up, a picture of another industry we got a peek of while riding through:

Oil drilling! These guys were a common sight.

 

Up next: Colorado!