Day 43: Eads to Ordway

June 22, 2006

After sleeping in the barn, I woke up early to a pretty sunrise that promised some heat later in the day, so I just got up, packed quickly, and left. I realized tonight would be my last night on the same schedule as the group (different accommodations, though), and that made me kinda sad in the morning. I thought I wanted to ride alone most of the day, but I was grateful when Jacques caught up with me at Haswell about 24 miles into the day.

My spot in the barn...no snorers or teenagers here, and no crickets in my tent

And in this direction, there's another road. This is somewhere around the halfway point for my trip. Exciting, I know.

Well, there were also a bunch of big ant hills along the road, I guess

And after an hour or so, I saw a cow, but it wouldn't stand still for a picture

There's a little store there that has a biker log that we had to sign. The owners' kids were watching TV in the store, and Jacques tried to talk to them a little. He told me that he misses his grandkids the most on this trip, and they were about the same age as these two in the store. "My wife? I do not miss. My children? I do not miss. My grandchildren? Ah. I miss my grandchildren. Nothing else." I know he's been sleeping on a lumpy, broken thermarest pad, so to get him to smile, I said, "You don't miss your bed? Your matress?" And that got a big grin out of him. "Yes, I miss my matress. Very much."

We rode on together and pounded out miles at about 18 mph while we talked about life, family, travels and home. He's a 68 year old guy on an inadequate bike with a broken wheel and I can barely keep up. Turns out he's done tons of touring around Europe, including a trip from Belgium to Jerusalem and a motorcycle trip from Belgium to China. He said the barren plains of eastern colorado looked a lot like parts of China. Anyway, the conversation helped those barren miles fly by until we stopped for lunch at the only shade tree we'd seen for miles and miles. He likes to rest after lunch, so I told him I'd ride slower so he could catch up if he wanted to later.

Jacques and I rode together a good part of the day today. We managed to find a little shade for lunch.

This is about the most interesting thing I've seen on the horizon so far today...

Miles later, a necessary liquid stop appeared at Sugar City, as did Jim and Jacques. We went to the cafe and had cold drinks, strawberry rhubarb pie, and ice cream. Jim also sampled the 75 cent sticky bun and highly recommended it, but I was full of pie and iced tea.

Jim continues his quest for the perfect cinnamon roll at Sugar City. I guess this one ranked pretty highly.

We rolled out for the final 6 miles toward Ordway just after 12:30 taking pictures of each other and playing around on the almost deserted road, but the wind was a little bit from the back and I decided just to take off. So I did and rode hard all the way into town, and that felt good.

Jacques and Jim take on the final miles to Ordway

I'd called Gillian, a woman who hosts cyclists, the day before to see if I could stay there, and since the volitile Englishman had been there the day before, there was no problem with me staying there. I wasn't exactly sure where I was going, but Gillian found me wandering around on her way to work and pointed me in the right direction where I had her house to myself for the afternoon and had a good nap and time to upload some pictures.

In the evening, I headed downtown (I use that term loosely) for some groceries and ran into Tim and a couple of the other groupies near their hotel before heading back to Gillian's for more internet time. Alvin came over to check some itinerary stuff for his group on her computer and left about the time Gillian came home from work. She and I ended up talking until well after midnight about life in middles-of-nowheres, teaching problematic students, the nomadic life, and such. Good thing I'd taken that nap, because even though the next day was short, I'd planned to get up early and say farewell to the group at their breakfast before I got off the trail for a few days. I wished I'd have had more time to get to know Gillian better--I think we'd have some fun conversations.

Today's ride: 66 miles (106 km)
Total: 2,264 miles (3,644 km)

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