Biking with all our gear again

Today we biked with fully loaded bicycles again. It was quite the adjustment! We started the day at UPS, mailing back things whose use cannot justify their weight (drone, laptop, etc). Mike and I mailed 20 lbs of stuff back, but we didn’t drop the full 20 lbs of weight since it included Mike’s old sleeping bag, which he has replaced with a warmer one.

We got a late start today, but only had to bike 50 miles. In addition to UPS, we also stopped at a bike store so that Mike could buy a tool for making adjustments on his disk brakes, which had become a bit wobbly.

We rode on 96 all day today, and we’ll be on 96 for a long time. It was a good road. Rarely traveled. Decently well-paved and free of debris. And, as promised, is was completely flat. Our map for this next section doesn’t even include an elevation profile because there is no change in elevation. A very welcome change.

Today was Mike’s first day riding in three weeks. He was worried that he wouldn’t be able to keep up with us after not riding for so long, but quite the opposite was true. He smoked us. I could hardly keep up.

We’re spending the night in Ordway, Colorado, at a locally-owned hotel. It’s actually quite charming. It’s a small town. We went to the grocery store and the cashier knew all the other customers by name. We also went to the saloon, which was quite the experience. We all felt very out of place initially but by the time we left we loved the place. We didn’t understand how Happy Hour worked but the bartender kept bringing us drinks unprompted. We learned it was buy one get one free and on top of that the drinks were insanely cheap. Like, $2.75 for two beers. The bartender carded all of us so saw we are all from Virginia and asked what brought four people from Virginia to Ordway, Colorado. When we told her we were biking across the country, she told us that we were the “most normal” cyclists she’s seen. It somehow didn’t feel like a compliment. Must be a low bar.

After the saloon we went to the restaurant in town, where we met a fellow cyclist riding cross-country. She’s staying in the same hotel tonight and had seen our bikes in the hotel’s courtyard. She’s staying at the same hotel as we are tomorrow night too, so we may run into her again. She also works for the US government, and we reflected how it seems the only people who can get enough time off to ride cross-country are Europeans and bureaucrats. Seems accurate.

Highlights

• easy ride, flat terrain
• we have had a lovely time in Ordway, from the hotel to the grocery store to the saloon to the restaurant, it has been charming

Lowlights

• headwind at the end of the ride. I was promised westerly winds

Julie’s food

• Breakfast: almond butter and banana oatmeal, coffee
• First Snack: Apple
• Second Snack: Clif bar
• Lunch: almond butter and banana sandwich, pistachios
• Pre-dinner drinks: bottled sangria and Mike’s hard lemonade. Keepin’ it classy.
• Dinner: basically the toppings of a cheesesteak (mushrooms, onions, and bell peppers) on a hoagie roll with fries on the side and many of Mike’s tater tots

Stats

• Total distance: 50.37 miles
• Elevation gain: 358 feet
• Weather: hot and dry, high of 77 degrees Fahrenheit