Not far into the ride (about 12 miles) we left Kansas...
And crossed the border into Colorful Colorado!!!
We had been looking forward to this moment for our entire trip. SO much excitement! Colorado!!!!!!
Right before crossing the border we came across some piles of corn in the middle of the road... Odd.. Goodbye Kansas. It's been interesting..
We also took a picture with the much less exciting Welcome to Kansas sign going the other way on the road. We realized we didn't have a picture with one from when we got to Kansas because we entered on gravel back roads. So here it is.
I don't know why we thought the scenery would change immediately upon entering Colorado, but it definitely did not. The Rockies hadn't popped up yet and it was flat, dry, hot, and empty! Almost immediately upon crossing the border this gigantic tractor passed us. It took up both lanes but moved over a little for us as we passed it.
Later, we passed an abandoned looking (cattle?) train with seats on the top of one of the cars and we decided to hop aboard for a short break.
We got lots of looks and waves and honks from people in cars who saw us.
After that we rode past the only building we had seen for probably 15 or 20 miles. A school that had this sign out front:
We couldn't resist. It's really cool that places like this that are along the Adventure Cycling Trans-Am route know there are lots of cyclists coming through in need of services. We took a break for a while in the shade of the dugout (there's literally no trees anywhere, so shade is hard to come by) to eat some snacks -- we had some hummus which was amazing.. The bathrooms even had cold water! We reluctantly left, and continued our ride into the boiling heat.
Alec's bike computer read 112, and 114 a little bit later. We think it was more like 105 or 106, but PHEW we were so hot.
A little later we were ecstatic to pass by a gas station where we filled up our bottles with ice cold water (!!) and ate some strawberry ice cream. It tasted so amazing.
Within 30 minutes of leaving, our water, which had been full of ice and very refreshing, heated up so much that it was almost painful to drink! And then the Rockies just came into view before us in the distance.. It was incredible!
You can just barely make them out in this picture, but they're there and we are so happy!
It was a million degrees with a strong headwind an no shade. We were so happy to have our first rest day planned.
We got picked up by my mom and driven north to my grandparents house to take a rest day the next day. It will be our first full rest day of the trip, and we don't have another planned between here and San Francisco. My grandparents live right outside of Colorado Springs, so we drove through there to get to their house and stopped in at a bike shop to get some work done on Alec's bike. He had to get a MILLION things done on his bike. Some of which we thought we could get by without, but we did it anyway in anticipation of climbing the Rockies. It would be no fun at all for something to give out on either one of our bikes halfway up a pass -- no thank you.
Alec got a new rear cassette, a new chain, and all new front rings (which are shown missing in the picture above). All of the new components were necessary because his current ones were super worn out. He rode without changing his chain for about 6 years, which is probably more than 6 times the lifetime of a chain before you have to change the cassette and everything too. I got my chain replaced (so the same didn't happen to me later down the road). His repair was about 240 and mine about 30. We saved his old parts and will hopefully do something cool with them later on.
In Colorado Springs we also got Chipotle for dinner... So... Good. It was the perfect meal. Alec slipped and fell in his bike shoes right outside Chipotle also.. Luckily I had the burritos but he poured the drinks all over himself. Poor Alec!
We also stopped in to REI to get a new sleeping pad for myself, mine had more holes than we wanted to spend time patching so we are going to return it.
We left the springs and headed to my grandparents, but the adventure was not complete! The car almost ran out of gas going over a pass to their house and we barely rolled into a gas station, phew.
We pulled into my grandparents house pretty late, visited some, and went to sleep. We are so glad to be here in this wonderful house with my wonderful grandparents! Tomorrow should be a perfect and restful day.
Haiku:
Ten states behind us,
Colorful Colorado,
Rocky Mountain high.
No comments:
Post a Comment