The Rockies

July 10

Woah…I can’t believe we’ve been on the road two months.   Well, two months and one week but this is totally worth the 2000+ miles of pedaling it takes to get to the Rockies in Colorado.  East Colorado was a drier, dustier, browner and slightly cooler version of Kansas (as has been mentioned in a previous post).  Sam and I were both just run down from it and I knew that merely getting to Colorado would not magically change anything…that we’d still get up at 4 am and wet our jerseys at every chance and spend our afternoon hiding from the heat and sun. And that is exactly what we did for two more days until we finally pulled up, dusty and in need of a laundry, to Pueblo.  Things did not start well.

The approach to Pueblo (population 100,000 or so) spits you off a quiet, back water section of hwy 96 onto a 4 lane divided highway with a wide shoulder (thankfully).  We’d been using hwy 96 to ride due west for at least a week and would follow it for half a days ride out of Pueblo.  The last quarter mile of this quiet section of 96 is where  I got the first finger….that I saw….of this trip.  A white SUV was required, unthinkingly by me, to slow and wait the twenty seconds necessary for an old couple in a Saturn station wagon to clear the way for passing.  I’m glad the driver didn’t just plow on through; they seem willing to do so in colorful Colorado.

Nonetheless, we arrived safe, if tired and a little dirty, in downtown Pueblo on Friday afternoon and checked into a motel that

a.       Had a pool

b.      Was close to the route and only 2 blocks from the only bike shop

c.       Offered a buy two nights and get the third free

Perfect!  Except it was on the edge of what was described to be a zone of interracial friction between the white and Latino community.  We were warned "Be in your room by dark" (too tired to burn the midnight oil anyway) and  “Don’t cross that bridge”…this would be the bridge we used to get to downtown AND the one we used Sunday morning to get to and from the health food market via a lovely riverside greenway (“Don’t ever use those greenways”). Perfect.  Luckily, we didn't have many aspirations for the weekend.

And after a weekend of not being harassed, threatened nor harmed, we left Pueblo at 7am under heavy skies.  The last time it had rained on us was in Illinois, so this was unusual.  But, I had looked at NOAA and knew it would come to nothing.  The clouds hung on the mountains until about 2p.  Now that I can see the peaks, I keep saying, "I can't believe we're here."

Tomorrow we will turn North to avoid the desert and approach Hoosier Pass.  Other cyclists are using the Western Express route to San Francisco and will suffer more heat, dry and blah....but not us, we will have climbs.