I'm not even going to bother apologizing this time. I'm not sorry for not posting, I was biking across the country enjoying every second of the experience. I didn't want to take the time out of my day to blog. That being said, I'm going to write a few posts catching everybody up on the happenings from Colorado to the Oregon coast.
I title this post 'The "high"lights of Colorado' not because I got high, but a vast majority of the team participated in recreational marijuana while we were there. I stress, I did not partake in the activity. Anyway, I remember being the first one to the Colorado border. It was the first really cool border crossing that we had seen. Two giant timber poles sticking out of the ground with two timber cross beams, and a giant wooden sign welcoming us to the state of Colorado. In no time we were up on the sign taking pictures, waiting for everyone else to get there. We were all taking turns getting on top of it, groups of 2-5 would be on it at once. After everyone got there, we took a group shot and carried on our way.
I'm not sure if I said this before, but I had certain expectations of Colorado, but eastern Colorado is nothing but the same cornfields, wheat fields, and other flat farmland. I can't remember how far we rode that day but the fields didn't end. I do remember we stayed just outside of Akron (Colorado not Ohio). We were 5 miles off of the main road and boy do I remember that road. Literally every 20 feet there was a crack in the road. Not just a crack that you drive over and don't think anything of it. A crack that went the entire way across the street, was 2 inches wide, and even dropped an inch or two. We felt every bump on our poor little bums. The church itself was literally in the middle of nowhere. I remember looking forward to looking at the starts but 1) it was too cloudy and 2) we decided to wake up at 4AM the next morning. The decision to wake up early caused a real scene that night. Some people just aren't morning people and they made that apparent with the 4AM wake-up announcement. I thought it made perfect sense. It had been extremely hot the last few days, was going to be the same temperature the next day, and we just crossed into Mountain Time, so to our bodies it would have felt like 5AM.
I remember waking up before the sun was up. We always wake up early but rarely do we beat the sun. It was totally worth it, though. We were ready to ride when the sun was just above the horizon, it was a little chilly, but I would much rather be a little chilly in the morning that to be extremely hot in the afternoon.
We had 100 miles into Denver that day and it was probably the easiest century I had done. We had 2 lunches that day and with that and the fact that we got up so early it felt like 2 different ride days. We were able to relax at lunch and take our time as opposed to pushing ourselves to beat the heat. We did run into a shower for all of 5 minutes. Just enough time to make me stop on the side of the road, put my phone in my bag, put on my raincoat, only to have to take it off 5 minutes later.
We made it to Denver by early afternoon. There were 4 of us that decided that we would go to a bike shop before we went to the host. Therefore, we pulled out Google Maps and looked for the nearest bike shop. That is when Patrick got angry. I don't know what snapped, but he started to get furious and he took it out on Google Maps. According to him, "It's the worst," "It's only good by default because there's nothing better." I don't know about you but I personally love Google Maps and pretty much everything else Google related (no I'm not getting paid by Google). We found a bike shop, all bought new chains as the original ones were wearing out after 2000 miles. From the bike shop Chloe was going to go back to the host and Patrick, Taylor, and I were going to a hotel where Taylor's mom was going to be staying while we were Denver. However, Taylor screwed up put the hosts address in her phone and lead us there first. What started out as a short 100 miler turned into a long day.
Once we finally figured out where we were going, we navigated to the hotel, immediately showered and laid in a nice comfy bed, surrounded by pillows and watched TV. None of us had watched TV since we left for the trip. We had seen a movie or two while at the hosts but never did we have the chance to just flip through the channels... especially in a bed!
We were in Denver for two days and a lot happened so I'm going to skim over it a bit. We had a build day the next day. We helped an older woman fix up her house. We did some painting, I installed a new front door, some insulation around the back door, a house number placard , and a few other miscellaneous items around the house. It was fun and the owner of the house was so thankful. That night, however, Chloe, Patrick, and I, on a whim, decided to go to the Zac Brown Band concert at Coors Field. We were going to try to scalp tickets but couldn't find any good prices. As we went to the ATM to get some money a gentleman noticed I had a Pittsburgh shirt on and asked if I was a Steelers fan, I looked at him with a dumb look on my face and said, "of course I'm a Steelers fan." Turns out he was from Western PA and was also a Steelers fan. His fiancee, however, was from Ohio and was a Browns fan. He admitted that he didn't know how it was going to work between them, but he said he loved her regardless. Anyway, they asked about our tan lines so of course we told them all about what we were doing. I went ahead and got my money out of the ATM while we were chatting and then one of the ladies of the group we were talking to proceeded to take money out as well. When she was done she turned to us and handed us $40 telling us that we were doing good work and to enjoy the concert, and that we did. Rather than scalping tickets, we just bought the cheapest tickets we could at the ticket office, which turned out to be the best seats ever. Sure they were far back from the stage but with the giant screens, you don't need to be that close. What we did have was the perfect view of the sunset over the Rocky Mountains. As the sun faded, being that it was Independence Day weekend, there were fireworks going off all over the place. There weren't fireworks at the concert, a little disappointing, but it didn't take away from the night.
The next morning we left for Boulder. It was a short ride so we were going to get in early and I was hoping to see my friend Sam, but it turned out that he was going to be gone for his birthday / Independence Day weekend. The ride was uneventful but the evening was anything but. It was laundry day so I helped out with laundry even though it wasn't my chore that week, I went to church, we climbed a mountain, and saw a great firework show at the University of Colorado - Boulder football stadium.
There's still more to Colorado but the Rocky Mountains deserve their own post.
No comments:
Post a Comment