EnRouteTransport

The running turtle represents hope. Moisture replaces barrenness, and the stirrings of life emerge from a post-primordial soup. The first standouts in the cornfields came in the form of wind turbines. What a good idea! The man who gave me tortillas in Scott City explained why the wind in Kansas.
“Oklahoma is always blowing about something. And Nebraska sucks. Kansas, unfortunately, is caught between the two.”
Wind farms seem like a reasonable approach to dealing with the antagonism between Oklahoma and Nebraska. Might as well get some green energy out of dispute. “I wonder if they have wind farms anywhere else in the state?” Of the wind farms I have observed, they don’t need many towers to generate ample energy for demand.

I stopped at Dighton at the Frigid Crème, a place much like the Dairy King, for a quick dose of fuel. While I waited, I opened up my map and made a quick survey of what lay ahead.
“Check it out. A bike camp in Bazine. I quite liked the one in Twin Bridges. I wonder how this one is different?” The map said to call ahead.

“Hi. Is this Elaine?”
“It is.”
“Do you have room available for one on a bike this evening?”
“I do. Would you be camping?”
“Yes.”
“I do $10 for a camp place. Do you want dinner or breakfast?”
“I’m not sure when I’ll be getting in tonight, but breakfast sounds good. When do you do breakfast?”
“Whenever you girls want. We’re going to have a house full of women tonight. Two other girls are coming in. I can do 5, 6, 6:30. Whenever you want. I know you girls like to leave early. Breakfast is $5, but I like to know ahead of time.”
“Sure. Sign me up for breakfast. I’ll take care of dinner before I get there. Probably in Ness City. Thanks.”

The Frigid Crème taught me a little more about my assumptions regarding what I think I’m ordering. Part of me doesn’t care a whole lot. I’m open to experience and often it’s just about putting fuel in my system. The heat adds a layer of challenge I haven’t quite figured out how to deal with.

I should leave early, but I don’t. With the wind, you can’t really tell how much you sweat. By midday, I see the salts collected on the outside of my clothes. I need to remember to add electrolytes, not just water. It doesn’t take long before the water I carry gets hot. I’m not much for ice usually, but Kansas makes me want it…anything to feel something just a little cooler than body temperature.

Back out on the road, more heat, more wind. The map mentioned that somewhere around Ness City things would change, that there would be some moderate hills. Things did change. The terrain appeared rumpled in places, fewer cornfields and wheat fields. More haying operations, more oil drilling. More grasslands.
“I saw a Monarch!” I could not have caught it, but I noticed how much I wanted to hold the butterfly, to somehow capture it.
I started to see more trees too, out in the distance. Birds, grasshoppers. At one point, I passed a grassy field full of machinery and equipment. “Look at that, the mechanized herds are without their skins.” I don’t know why I keep thinking that the wildlife, the bison and deer, are really machines. I haven’t seen any out here but in Yellowstone I figured they were all fake, there so we could take pictures of something. Same so with the farm equipment.

I came to a historical marker at a tree.
“Shade!” I pulled over and got off my bike. Shade. After days on the road without any, it’s the little things. Turns out, George Washington Carver homesteaded a mile south of this sign for a time, before Tuskegee. He invented things and grew things and made stuff. As the sign said, he revolutionized agriculture and made over 500 products from peanuts and sweet potatoes, including paint, soap, cosmetics, and medicines. All this at a tiny spot on the road called Beeler. It took me a while to get going again. I didn’t want to leave the shade.

Four miles before Ness City, I got a flat tire. Luckily, I was near a driveway with some bushes and pulled into the shade to work on the flat. I welcomed the opportunity to sit on the ground and stop pedaling. I was back on the road in 45 minutes and noticed that my spare tube had a leaky valve. “Maybe that’s why I couldn’t find a hole in it before.” Things seemed to work pretty well though. Flat fixed. I would deal with the tube I replaced later, in Bazine.

Right before Ness City, I saw a sign advertising the “skyscraper of the plains.” “I guess the grain elevators don’t count. Those are pretty tall and dwarf everything else in a place even if they are over three stories tall. Still, I made the detour to check it out. Bazine lay nearly 20 miles further down the road. Even though I’d been eating all day, I needed some more fuel to make it the last stretch. I stopped at the Frigid Crème again thinking I learned a thing or two from my previous stops and could navigate the menu. Plus, I could get ice cold water and food quickly without having to go inside. Going inside would be a commitment to Ness City…I probably wouldn’t be able to regain my cycling momentum until the morning, and I really wanted to see Elaine’s bike camp.

I had electrolytes on my mind and ordered something that I thought would replenish my energy stores enough for the evening without making me sick the last way down the road. A simple hamburger (I knew what I was getting with this?). Spicy pickle spears (the electrolytes). And a cookie cyclone for afterwards. With all the heat, my brain is only partially functional. I ordered a big water, which I got right away and started drinking. I think I’m thinking clearly, but I know that I’m only marginally functional.
As is my habit at a stop, I turned on my phone. I check for service, texts, emails, and at dinner time I often post something to facebook.
Friend Amanda popped up and wanted to arrange a meet up with a friend of hers in KS who thought for sure the state would kill me. At that moment, I thought he knew his state well. Amanda buoyed me up by saying I was “tuff” and would be fine.
I got a refill on my water.
Across from the bench where I waited outside the Frigid Crème stood the Oil Derrick Inn. I liked the sign and was glad I had other plans for the evening otherwise I could see myself going in and asking for a room.
Amanda wanted to know what roads I was going on to get out of Kansas. I didn’t know. My map ended about ten miles east of Bazine, and I hadn’t looked ahead. I usually don’t pay much attention to the road numbers anyway, more the town names. I was so focused on getting to Bazine that I couldn’t think further ahead than that. To top it off, I’d finished my second glass of water, waited 25 minutes, had a lengthy text conversation, and updated my facebook page. “How long does it take to make a burger?!”
I went up to the window wanting another refill on my water. The two women inside buzzed about, neither of them said word one to me. One of them started making my cyclone. Five minutes of standing in the searing sun waiting, and the window finally slid up, and a paper bag came out.
“Sorry that took so long. It’s my fault. I messed up your order and we had to remake it.”
The ice cream came out too.
“How much do I owe you?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“What?”
“Really, don’t worry about it. Be safe.” And the window came down.
I took my bag around the corner to the bench. Good burger. Pickle spears. Holy smokes, they’re fried! I ate them anyway, for the electrolytes…and my curiosity compelled me to do so. If I thought the sun was hot, those pickles were hotter! Spicy and deep fried hot. Even better than fried pickles was the combination of following all that with ice cream. Oh blissful heat delirium, I know not what I do. I didn’t think I would eat it all, but it was cold, and I did.
Back down the road. The woman who gave me the bag offered her last parting farewell, “Be safe.”

I wondered if I would make it to Bazine before dark.
Right before dusk, I came to the town, passed a sign made out of a bicycle. I looped back around when I realized I rode through town, “That must be it, right there on the road.” I pulled into the driveway. I saw two bikes there, loaded. “Gotta be the place.” A man stood in the garden. “Excuse me.” He didn’t hear me. I leaned my bike against a picnic table, looked at the door and saw a little card indicating Elaine’s Bicycle Bed & Breakfast. Right as I was about to knock, the man came over.

“You made it! I was beginning to wonder if I should go look for you.” He gave me a big hug and ushered me inside. I found the kitchen full of women in orange. Yes! I stumbled through the house a combination of wearing my sunglasses in the dark and a variety of levels I couldn’t quite identify.
“I’ll be right back. I’m a bit visually impaired.”
I went out and got my glasses and came in, totally dazed. They got me a glass for water, and I started drinking with gusto, and Dan put a bowl of apricot cobbler with ice cream in front of me. I ate it between talking with the gathered group and listening.

Meaghan and Rita both came in separately. Rita comes from Massachusetts, and I never figured out where Meaghan came from, only that she was moving. She started her trip in Seattle, had something to do with New York, and was ending in Connecticut.
“Why did you decide to do this ride, “ I asked Rita.
“I always wanted to go across the country, but I don’t like driving. It seemed like the way to do it.”
“Had you ever been on a tour before?”
“No. I did an 80-mile ride before I left but never did an over night. How far did you go today?”
“I don’t know. Adding it up, looks like 93 miles.”
Meaghan had been out since June 1 on a ride that zigzagged through the country. “I started in Seattle and then dropped down and picked up the Lewis & Clark Trail to Missoula. Then I rode down through into Utah and Colorado, picked up the TransAm. In the morning I’m going north up into Chicago. I’ll probably ride some of the Underground Railroad and then pick up the Northern Tier to take me into Connecticut.”
“How do you pronounce Bazine?”
“You said it right.”
It rolls off the tongue like “magazine” but starts with “buh.”
Both Meaghan and Rita were pretty much ready to go to bed. We all talked for a little while and then split up. I took a shower while they got settled for camping.
Elaine and I worked out breakfast for 6:30.
I stayed up an checked out my tube. I couldn’t find a hole in it, but I was also checking in the living room where the fans had the air moving constantly and I couldn’t tell.
“Where are you sleeping tonight?”
“I’ll just throw my sleeping pad and bag out on the ground. It’ll be good. It doesn’t look like rain, and it’s pretty warm out there.”

I found a spot on the lawn that looked decent. I lay half covered on my sleeping pad and sprawled over it. Little things kept biting into me. I twitched and tried to cover up. I kept getting annoying little bites and kept getting deeper and deeper into my sleeping bag. I contained myself on top of the pad. Still little bites. I heard things rustling under the pad. I have no idea if I ever slept, but by midnight I realized I wouldn’t be sleeping there.
“The must have a deck or something I could get on.” I looked around the house, and no deck came into view. I eyed the picnic table. “There.” I put my sleeping pad on top of the table and my sleeping bag. Before I climbed up there I made a deal with myself, “Stay on the table, ok.” “Ok.” I fell into a peaceful sleep there, waking when the dogs barked, going back to sleep and then waking just before five when Meaghan and Rita were well on their way to departure. I sat on the table and watched them go, lights blinking in the dark.

Dan, Elaine, and I had a pleasant breakfast.
“What brought you to Bazine?”
“Elaine grew up here. I grew up in Minnesota. We met and married in Colorado. Then we came here.”
“The town needs help. We need young people. They move away and don’t come back.”
“Is agriculture the main industry?”
“Primarily, but oil too.”
“What motivated you to start taking in cyclists?”
“We kept seeing them here, a lot of them in quite a desperate way. We wanted to do something to help. People kept telling me I was crazy to let strangers into my house, but cyclists aren’t going to steal things from you because they have no where to carry anything. And I’ve found them quite an interesting group of people. Everyone has different reasons for going on a trip like this. I like being here for the people who really need help, who come in and are ready to quit. Sometimes all they need is a place to stay, kind people, food, and some inspiration. It can really turn things around.”

I wasn’t sure how I measured up in terms of really needing help. When I showed up, I did need help, something a little water, apricot cobbler, and rest fixed. I bounded outside to go. Seven had an earlier ring to it than the hours I’d been starting, but still late. Rita and Meaghan had already been gone long enough to cover 20 miles. Right as I was about to put the panniers on my bike, I noticed my back tire was flat again. I knew it, that leaky valve. I put the tube that went flat the day before back in and loaded up the pressure with the floor pump Dan had. Oh what a wonderful tool, a floor pump. It held air, and I took my leave. 7:45.

Kansas. Welcome.
Apart from the signs that let you know you crossed a state line – or a time zone line – little things signal something’s different.
Because I spend so much time looking at the road, I notice when road conditions change. When I crossed into Kansas, the road improved – not across the board, but in most places.

Stuff on the road changed noticeably, the further I went. And special for me, the wind picked up – a nice crosswind to toss the front of my bike around and make picture taking challenging. When I stopped for photographs, I had to try and time my shot with the pulse of the wind because I couldn’t hold still. And while the skyline remained unchanged, a flat line without pulse, clouds dotted the sky.

The grasshoppers of Colorado who would sit on my bags or fly through my wheels or crash into me or lay squashed on the road simply disappeared. Nada. Not a one. No road kill excepting a small bird on rare occasion: no bees, no butterflies, no moths, no mammals, no snakes. Immaculate roadways devoid of the out-of-placements that give my curiosity and inquisitiveness something to chew on. I set to work on the absence. Absence has its own signification, a stronger messaging system for what it suggests and implies, lays bare than what may be said outright. I had to give the landscape time to uncode itself.

I pushed through the wind and stopped at the edge of Mountain and Central time. I swear I saw a shadow down the road. On one side, it was 2 p.m., and on the other, the clock read 3…whatever clock was out there. I changed my watch when I entered Kansas knowing I wanted my goal for the day to include a state line crossing and a time zone crossing. As soon as possible I needed to adjust my circadian rhythms to counter the effects of jet lag. Is it still called jet lag when you’re pedaling? Not only did I have to get up an hour earlier, but this is the state they tell you to get up or leave at 4 a.m. By Mountain time standards that’s 3 a.m. By the home standards of Pacific time, that’s 2 a.m. A note on time. It’s irrelevant. In Kansas, it’s hot during the day and cooler at night. I always want to sleep as soon as I stop riding no matter what way you cut the apple. I can’t figure out when to write. I take a nap. I get up. I write. I think I should get more sleep. I get up because I ought to go when it’s cool. I have no problem sleeping, but I probably don’t do enough of it, and I keep odd and erratic hours.

I won’t keep you in suspense any longer. Despite the massive scale of agriculture in western Kansas, I estimate that the place is dead. Not the people, but the land and the life the land usually supports. Michael Pollan has some influence over my opinion here. When I read Botany of Desire upon first moving to Oregon, I finally understood what organics were all about. It clicked. Pollan uses the potato as his example of the virtues of organic cultivation, the horrors of industrial potato farming in Idaho, and the travesty of genetically modified foods. I saw the entire argument recreated in western Kansas with wheat and corn. Many fields stood naked in the sun, devoid of any life: no bugs, no weeds. The soil – perhaps “medium” would be a better word – had a grayish look to it, corpselike. I passed signs announcing the success of technological innovation in the field with numbers indicating which kind of GMO corn grew there. I actually marveled at how the corn could grow…and nothing else.
“It must go in the soil and the water. Do they modify the corn so that it resists herbicides? How can you kill every other plant in the place and still grow something? Industrial-scale monoculture. Wow. I ride in awe.”

That first day riding in Kansas was a long day. I’m not sure I counted the miles. The crosswind tired me. I left late. The terrain consistency numbed my hands. Before I got to Leoti, my destination for that first night, I pulled over at a picnic area to rest. I didn’t know exactly what I was after, but I wanted to get off my bike. As soon as I saw the windswept area I knew what it would be. I rolled up to one of the picnic tables, perched my bike against the roof structure, climbed on top of the table and lay down. “It’s good. Five minutes resting.”

I continued into Leoti. Later, I learned the locals pronounce it “Lee-oat-uh.” Sometimes letters are just a best guess at the phonetics of a place. “Dinner first, then lodging.” I rode past the Dairy King and found a Mexican food restaurant. Open open open, but I couldn’t find a door that would open. I went back into town and made a few more loops thinking there must be a restaurant somewhere I missed. I couldn’t find one, so I went back to the Dairy King, totally spaced out and dehydrated. The Dairy King is like an old school drive in. The restaurant is essentially a little kitchen with a couple people in it who slide windows up and down with screens to talk to customers. When your meal is ready, they knock on the window to get your attention or put a bag out on the counter, and I guess you know it’s yours.

I sat at one of the tall patio tables under the carport drinking iced water from a massive, 32oz Styrofoam cup. A bang on the window let me know my food was done. It came in a plastic bag, Styrofoam container, and little paper bag with about 7 napkins. In my warped mental state, I’d gotten a grilled chicken salad and fried okra with a limeade. I anchored the bags in the wind with the cup of water and the limeade, held most of the extras between my legs, and turned my back to the wind and tried to eat. It took some doing, but I managed. I went back up to the window for dessert. I wanted a banana, but the fruit came with ice cream, so I got the boat.
“It’s challenging to figure out how to eat all this in the wind.”
The guy behind the window nodded.
“I guess that’s why people have cars.” I noticed that several people used the drive in for its intended purpose.
He smiled and nodded assent at my realization. Who rides a bike in Kansas?

After dinner, I went in search of lodging. I thought I would sleep in the park, the likely camping area. The map said a hospital across the street had bathrooms campers could use. I followed signs to the hospital. I went past a building that had to have been the hospital although it looked like no hospital I would have imagined. The building stood next to the park and had a big sign on the door that said, “No public restrooms.” I couldn’t imagine where I could find something open in town at 5 a.m. and didn’t want to pee in someone’s yard. I went to the hotel, where a friendly innkeeper happily accepted my business and didn’t want to reveal much about other resources in town, insisting that everything I needed I could get there.
“How long have you lived here.”
“Oh, about thirty years. I came from Nebraska. I’ll probably retire there, but that won’t be for another ten or fifteen years.”
“What brought you here?”
“My family bought this place, and my wife and I came down here to run it. I put you in the handicapped room. It’s the last room I have on the ground floor. Is that ok?”
“I come with two wheels. Will no one need it?”
“Usually if they do, they call ahead. I think you’ll be ok in there.”
“Ok.”
“You know, you could always take the bus if you didn’t want to ride in the wind.”
“That would be the way to do it. Is there passenger train service around here?”
“Down in Garden City, south of here. But the bus is better.”

The next morning, I thought I would finish the map segment I had. I didn’t count exactly how far it was, but seemed like four panels worth, about 100 miles. The last “big” town was Ness City, followed by a little town that had a bicyclist camp. Then came Alexander, which had only a camping icon. That’s not enough. Bazine. “I wonder how they pronounce that place.”

I stopped in Scott City, the big town after Leoti, and wandered the grocery store looking for something. A man came up to me in one of the aisles.
“I have to ask. Where’d you start?”
“I left from Eugene, Oregon.”
“Your state cost us money.”
I raised one eyebrow. Friend or foe?
“The city bought ten bicycles because they thought it would be a good idea if there were bikes downtown. Then people could ride the bike to wherever they wanted and leave it there for the next person to ride. Right away, people took those bikes and never brought them back. The city said they weren’t going to buy the other ten they had planned on getting. A bunch of people asked, ‘Now why’d you do that?’ They said, ‘They do it in Oregon, and it works.’”
I disbelieved some of what he had to say because I’m not aware that Oregon has successfully launched a bike-share program. I remember seeing bike-share in DC. That’s novel that we even have such a program in the U.S. We’re incredibly behind European nations in this regard.
“What possessed you to ride your bike across the country.”
“I’m going to a conference in Washington, DC, and I thought I would ride there.”
“A conference, huh? That must mean you’re intelligent.”
“Some say that.” The words hadn’t left my mouth when I felt his next comment coming.
“Yet you’re riding your bike across the country…,” implying the counter-intelligence that would be needed to do something that required so much work.
“I’m crazy too. I was that way before I left.”
“How come so many people from Oregon ride their bikes across the country?”
I thought this was an excellent question and one I didn’t feel I sufficiently answered. “We have year-round cycling conditions there. People love to ride, and we tend to be health conscious.” I didn’t say anything about environment or lifestyle or the pioneering spirit or any of that….
“Well, if I’m going to Some Town, I get in my car and go. It’s quick. Takes only 45 minutes. Well, be safe out there.”
When I left the store, he was waiting for me outside.
“Here. These are what I bring here to the store.” A pack of Mama Lupe’s tortillas sat on a stack of boxes of the same. “Here. Take this. They’re good energy food. Put some peanut butter on there or something. They don’t need to be refrigerated.”
“Thanks.”

I rode out of town.
“I keep seeing all this corn. I doubt all this corn is for people. Surely a bunch of it they feed to cows.”
Somewhere out there I’d seen a sign for ADM and the tagline on NPR ran through my head, “Archer Daniels Midland, supermarket for the world.” “Puts a whole new perspective on feeding the world – dead food from dead land. Really, who wants to eat this kind of food? I suppose the people who grow it think it’s wholesome.”
I started to pass feedlots. I first noticed mounds of black soil. “Wow, there really is living soil out here! It’s all stacked up in piles.” Then I caught a whiff of it. “Oh, that’s just piles of manure. I wonder if they till that into the soil?” The smell from the lot was enough to make me gag, and I wondered how I would make it through feedlot country without the assistance of a vehicle to get me through it quickly or keep the offensive air at bay, outside my protective metal and glass bubble.
In one of the lot pens, a ruckus was underway. As I got closer, I saw a cowboy approach a cow on the ground. The sound of a lash cracking followed by a low groan from the cow immediately directed my attention to the scene. All the other cows ran away. Then I heard some dull thuds, and the cow moaned again. The cowboy had a cudgel he brought down on the cow for all he was worth. Apart from the plaintive moan, the cow moved naught. I don’t keep cows, have no idea what the best treatment for them is. Presumably, if you can get a cow on its feet it won’t die. The scene disturbed the sensitive parts of my core. That’s the kind of thing that keeps people from eating meat. Everywhere along the way I passed signs for “premium” beef. “Now I know what that means.”

The day went like that. I had a tough time out there in western Kansas with the genetically modified crops, lifeless landscape, and feedlots. It’s like the anti-Oregon.

And then I saw something that made the day ok. A turtle. Alive!
“Those little buggers can move fast.” The turtle saw me coming and ran off the road. Stopped and hid in its shell, poked its head out and ran a little further away when it saw me coming to a stop. It poked its head up again, curious and cautious.
I thrilled to see anything alive in that sterile landscape, and I felt the turtle redeemed it all.

Do you ever forget that eastern Colorado isn’t Kansas?
I do.
Now that I’m in Kansas, I see the difference. Something about Colorado feels on the edge.

On leaving Eads, I remarked on what lay ahead. Eleven miles down the road, I came to Chivington. North, nine miles down a dirt road, I could go to the Sand Creek Massacre site. South some distance – I don’t know, 20 miles – I could visit one of the Japanese internment camp sites from WWII. “What is this place?” Seems like a place no one wants to go so it becomes a place to leave things to forget them. After the Spaniards introduced horses to North America, American Indians began to settle these plains regions. We must remember that bison ranged the prairies in massive herds, and this animal became the mainstay of these nomadic tribes’ lives: food, clothing, shelter. Seems like there would be enough room for the tribes to get along. If anything, they might fight over water. I would guess that the need for water in the area would be so great that people would find areas defined by water and make that their territory. Or, other people would understand the need for water and, like the helpful people today, share with those in need.

Water becomes an issue for me, and I start carrying more. I need more, and I find less access to it.

Sometimes I think of myself as a lone cowgirl on my bike…riding my steed through the gapless prairie. “I want to get through this.” I don’t know why that impulse arises so strongly…like somehow I’m crossing the desert. The riches come in every moment, not on the other side. The encounter with myself and my own need to be done with this journey, to pass through without touching or being touched, I identify as my escape mechanism, a closed mind, tuning out. Why? What could possibly hurt so much from listening to this place talk?

Much hurt occurred here.

I felt a kind of repulsion in Chivington. I felt drawn to and repulsed by it like the way I can’t help but examine roadkill. Chivington. I can’t believe they named a town after a man who’s biggest glory came from slaughtering women and children living peaceably in a place few could survive. The condition of the town told much, and I suspect this place will die a thousand times as an organized unit before it will again sustain life.

I decided against the ride down the dirt road. Twenty extra miles in the wind and 50 miles from the nearest town…I wasn’t sure that my journey would pass quietly through such a place. While I often feel equipped for life on the range, I know I am not. More so than running out of water or getting a flat tire, I wasn’t sure I could handle encountering the women and children out there and then move on. At the turn, I did want to read the interpretive sign. A car was parked in front of it, and when I rolled up for a look, I discovered no panel existed. She was talking on the phone. Earlier I tried to make a decision about visiting the site, “What’s out there?”
“Nothing. Some people wanted a monument. The tribes who suffered at the site did not.”
Even the absence of an interpretive sign spoke volumes to me.

I continued on to Brandon.
I don’t know who Brandon was or why the town has that name. As the woman I talked to in Eads accurately depicted, there’s not much to it. Brandon, to me, will probably always be a young boy learning to pee in the wind. My map indicates there are no services of any kind in Brandon – no rest area, no place to get water – just a few buildings and residences and a grain elevator.

A truck was parked just off the road, and a dad and his son were out at the back of the truck. The boy, who couldn’t have been more than 3, had his shorts around his ankles. The wind coming up from the south had some strength to it, and I noticed his dad turned him to face north…until they saw me on the road. What are the rules of decorum when you stop in a town with no bathroom and you gotta go? I wonder if they worked it out, making pee-pee into the wind without it all ending up in the shorts around his ankles. The wind was that strong. I find these father-son moments touching, maybe because they seem rare in popular culture or I just haven’t spent much time intersecting with father-son spheres. Somehow, that little boy, Brandon, will know how to pee in the wind. He may not remember how he learned it, but for real, his dad taught him.

The landscape nearing Kansas had four variations: young cornfields, cut wheat fields burned dry into a prickly amber buzz cut, bare soil, and grasslands. The grasslands had a soft, swishing, musical sound when I could hear it past the rushing of the wind in my own ears. There was a lot less of the grassland and much more of the other three.

While the built environment did not offer much more variation than the landscape, I do think there’s a way to see the cones and cylinders in a way that accentuates the simplicity of their forms, that speaks to the aesthetic of farm machinery and equipment. I become a huntress of shape, color, juxtaposition, line.

I discovered a pile of gold set in contrast to the penetrating blue sky. I thought of the dragon who lays atop the pile, keeper and hoarder of the resource.

“Leave early to avoid the heat.”
I left earlier than I usually do into a gray, overcast Sunday toward Eads.

At dinner the night before, the proprietress at Martin’s didn’t think I would find much open on a Sunday. Who knew? The Prairie Horizons Trail map indicated Eads had the most services of any community on the trail. I hoped something would be open because I had to wait until 9 a.m. the next day for the post office to open. I knew I would finally have some mail to pick up. A little resupply, perhaps a little surprise. In between, the road stretched straight and long, empty stock transport cars on one side, electric poles and flat, open landscape on the other. Every now and again, the two would switch sides as if even the elements themselves found their consistency tiresome.

The train cars provided considerable entertainment value for me. I enjoyed the miles and miles of gallery pedaling and wondered why we don’t have more opportunities to appreciate train car art. Some of the art looked as though it were the sketchbook for people learning the craft, others stood out in their accomplishment. Sometimes the dates associated with the cars revealed a certain kind of history embedded there. “’06, must have been the opportunity to write on a wall, before Facebook came to Ordway.” I also believe that our communities ought to have designated spaces for people to create street art. It self regulates. We need no rules, just space to let people practice art. An underpass by my house collects street art, some of it amazing. Public Works comes by on a fairly regular basis and paints over it. Too bad. Where else are the Banskys of the world born?

I came upon a cyclist ahead, stopped. I pulled over and found him busy with some photographic equipment. “Are you taking pictures of the graffiti?”
“The light looked really neat.”
We did the usual exchange of origination and destination.
“I started in Chicago, and I’m headed to Mesa. I love the southwest, I think it will be great.”
“Are you moving?” He had a lot of stuff with him.
“No, just going to spend some time with someone I know.”
“Are you in art school?”
“Yeah. Columbia.”
“What’s your media?”
“Photography. The equipment is kind of heavy though.”
I wanted to see his work, but he’s not posting anything. Bummer.
“I camped in Haswell last night with a woman headed east. Amanda. Maybe you’ll catch up to her. Haswell is really small.”

I left him there facing backwards on his bike, arranging gear.

I passed a snake, looped back around to take a picture of it. “Sneaky bugger. Look how camouflaged you are. Are you alive?” I inched closer, and it didn’t move. No snakey tongue flick, and its head listed ever so slightly to one side. I gently rolled my tire up next to it and touched it. No movement. “Maybe it’s cold because it’s overcast out and not moving fast.” I touched it with the toe of my shoe. It didn’t move. Then I gave it a little nudge, and it moved…because I pushed it. “Bummer.” Well, in the middle of the road and really invisible, maybe it wouldn’t get pancaked. I didn’t feel like moving it off the road. In some way, it already was the road.

Two cyclists passed me going the other direction. We wanted to stop but didn’t. The man passed, “Good morning! Is it still morning?”
11:30 a.m. Gosh, when you leave early to avoid the heat, it does seem like you ride forever, and it’s still morning. The drawback to this strategy, I find, leaves you with a whole day of doing what in some of these towns.

I experiment with different ways of seeing the environment. I thought back to the class I took in the Fall term, the one that sparked this crazy project. The first thing Chris had us read for Transportation and Preservation was the first third of a book that introduced us to “exploring.” Explorers must go slowly, either by foot or bike. They ask ‘why’ or ‘how come’ or ‘wherefore’ of things people usually take for granted or pass by. They look up. I learned how to look up before this. When I used to care for raptors, I learned to appreciate this perspective, partly because I realized the frequency of creatures looking down…on me. And I have a friend who lives high up. We don’t realize how magical the world can be when we look up. Explorers, when they look up, see a whole new world. At a minimum, elements in the sky become another kind of continuous gallery out in the wide, open landscapes, like the trains. Everything out there stands in self-composed portrait: windmills, grasses, fence posts, power lines, roads, clouds, grasshoppers.

Even coming into Eads, the town had an air in the seamless light.
I found the restaurant open and walked into Sunday lunch buffet, scared. ‘Do I just go sit down? Looks like the whole town comes out for Sunday.’
“Take a seat wherever you’d like.”
I’d like a booth. I picked one in the middle that was available with a view to the highway to my left. In front of me, a table of four had recently arrived: grandma, mom, and two girls. They were all headed to the buffet except the youngest who waited on a chef salad.
When they all came back to the table, a woman from the other room inquired about the mom’s status, “It’s tough to follow on Facebook. Did you move back here?”
“For the summer. My fiancé is in the military, and we’re going to DC in September to find out where we’ll be stationed. Right now we don’t know where that will be, so I came out here with the girls until then. I’m going back soon to do all the paperwork.”
“Well, I’ll be. You look like a boy with your hair cut like that,” she acknowledged the older girl in an aqua colored girl’s t-shirt and pink skirt. “Good luck to you. I need to get back to my birthday party in the other room.”

After lunch, I rode through the town, found the post office, examined the park, evaluated the downtown (small, crumbling in places).

“Is this your place?”
“Yeah. Sort of.”
“How long have you lived here?”
“My family just bought this place. I came back to help out. I’ve always lived in Colorado. Grew up in Brandon just down the road. If you blink, you’ll miss it.” She probably hadn’t spent a lot of time chatting with the customers.
“Do you get many cyclists here.”
“Not anymore.”
“Really? Why is that?”
“I guess the season’s over. That’s what someone told me the other day.” I couldn’t quite believe her evaluation having seen three cyclists earlier that day. Probably they weren’t staying there though. I would have gone past Eads if it weren’t for the mail.
“What do people come here for?”
“I’m not racist. We have a lot of Mexicans staying here. People come out to hunt prairie dogs.”
I appreciated the honesty, but I don’t think she quite understood what I was asking. I wasn’t going to discount the popularity of a prairie dog hunt…heck of a sport. An innkeeper in John Day mentioned something similar. Must be one of those dry prairie entertainments people who don’t live in those kinds of environments can’t fathom. Still, why do people come to Eads?

The broken flagger who stopped me coming down from Hoosier Pass kept telling me, “You’re going the wrong way.” I assumed he was joking and gave it back to him. Must have been a ploy to discover my route. He succeeded if that was his intent, but wouldn’t let his estimation drop. How could I be going to Washington, DC, standing there in the Atlantic watershed side of the Continental Divide?

When I left Pueblo and got a face full of wind, for several moments I thought he was right. Even the signs on the road wanted to impress that upon me, the sunflowers whipping about at the edge of the road their yellow heads nodding in assent.

The turn onto highway 96 didn’t change the state of the wind, but the song the signs sing changed. “Prairie Horizon Trail. What’s that under the bike sign? It doesn’t look like a scenic byway sign but it sorta does. Haven’t seen bicycle-specific signage like that yet.” Heading out on the flats made the world seem like Kansas. Bad me, Colorado does not include the entire eastern half of the state. I stopped in Boone for some drinks, hearing John from Portland in the wind, ‘Did you buy something?’ At the Boone Store, I chatted a bit with the shopkeeper. At the register, he indicated the cyclist logbook there for me to sign in on if I so chose. The little notebook had the Prairie Horizon Trail logo as its cover. When I finished scribbling in it, I asked, “What is the Prairie Horizon Trail? Is it a bicycle-specific thing, a driving route…?” He didn’t give me a direct answer, so I tried a different question, “How long have you lived here?”

Through his gravelly voice that came from somewhere beneath his neckerchief, “59 years. Born and raised here in Boone, Coluhraduh. I was born in 1951.”
He reminded me I wasn’t in Kansas yet. “1951 is a great year! I have a friend who was born that year, and the building I live in at home was built that year.”
“July 10th.”
“No way? That’s my brother’s birthday. Wyoming’s birthday too.”
“Where’d you grow up?”
“Cheyenne.”
“I been there a time or two. My name’s Jeff Earhart.”
“Like Amelia?”
“Spelled the same E-A-R-H-A-R-T. No relation far as I know.” He changed the subject. “10 kids in my family. I’m the middle boy. The kids age in range from 73 to …let me think about this a moment…46.”
“Wow, your Mom was pregnant a long time.”
“There would have been 13 of us if they all lived. She had three miscarriages after me. Back then, that’s how it was – barefoot and pregnant. I’m married now and live on the same land my Dad had. He came out here in 1917. That place is the original Boone homestead. Daniel Boone’s grandson, Harold, originally settled out here on that spot. There used to be a three-story brick school building right there where the park is. I went there to the third grade but they had all the way up to graduation. After the third grade, they built that new school there over yonder, and I went there.”
I noticed the train station building across the way. “Do you get passenger service out on these tracks or is it just freight?”
“Every once in a long while a passenger train comes through, but you can’t get on it here. You have to go to La Junta.”
Two men pulled up in a pick up and got out. Their boots held clots of sticky gray mud, and they ceremoniously scraped their feet on the concrete and metal mat. “Don’t want to track mud all over the store.”
“Ah, it’s not a problem.” They went in. “That guy’s name is Jeff too. They were in here earlier. Dealing with some broken water. I guess they need some more parts.” Just then his wife drove up to relieve him of his shift. “Hi Hotcakes! Just here chattin’ with this lady, tellin’ her some history.”
“Did you give her a map?” She opened the shop door, grabbed a map from the counter at the register and handed it to me. “Here, this will help you find your way around our area.” She went inside.
Jeff finished smoking his cigarette. “I should get in there and see if those guys need any help finding parts.”
“Thanks!”

I never got a straight answer from anyone about the Prairie Horizon Trail, but it appeared to be a regional strategy for the towns along Highway 96 to offer some direct service to cyclists. The towns have few services along the Trail from Pueblo to Kansas. In the area around Boone and Ordway, cattle ranching holds a traditional role in the economy, and the rail line held miles of livestock cars sitting in wait. Meanwhile, these miles and miles of cars provide a linear gallery during time of rest.
I passed by a prison just outside of Fowler. “Really?” I guess The Max in Florence doesn’t count as a regional facility since it’s a federal prison. I didn’t think I’d be going past another jail so soon, but there it was. “There’s some employment for the area and perhaps a residential population to skew the employment to population ratio.”

This stretch of road had an abundance of yellow butterflies. I would call them Cabbage Moths, but I think those are more white. Not sure if Cabbage Moths come in bright yellow also. They collected on the side of the road, hit by cars and blown to the edge, caught in the roadside grass. Frequently, a live butterfly would be on a dead one. “Are they mourning the loss of a loved one?” The prairie dogs definitely do that. It’s the saddest thing to see them there keening over a road-killed family member. They’re so cute sunning themselves out on the roadway, but it often spells certain death if they fall asleep. Sometimes animals do weird things though, and I wondered if the butterflies suck juices out of the dead ones. “It looks like a compassionate gesture, but maybe it’s more practical and cannibalistic? There are so many of them, I wonder where they came from?” The road had red paving gravel, and I wanted to get a picture of the yellow butterflies on the red. I spent so much time looking at the road then I missed much of what was happening out in the landscape. Instead of the landscape, I did notice how the yellow butterflies collected on the side of the road almost in drifts, and then they would flit out in the open air, two at a time twining and twisting around one another as if they were trying to coordinate a destination being attached with a silken cord.

When I looked up from the butterflies, I saw another prison. “Wait. Really? Another one? You figure there’s enough razor ribbon around that outdoor facility? Sounds like they’re having a good time playing soccer or something out there.” I pulled over in Crowley and read the roadside interpretive board. “For real, they even specify two prison facilities in the area as the main employment. Tourism at the two lakes also helps.” In the first half of the 20th century, the area thrived from income produced from sugar beets. Once they figured out how to irrigate the land with water from the nearby Arkansas River, the land produced countless harvests of sugar beets, processed into granulated sugar at the plant in Sugar City. In 1967, the plant fully closed and the town populations shrank, the towns themselves withering and crumpling in the dry plains environment.

I planned to stay in Ordway, so I pushed on. Train car art fascinates me. I read something long ago about tagging, how there’s a kind of code for deciphering the seeming hieroglyphics. Graffiti, different than tagging, puts an artistic spin on word art. I couldn’t help but think that most of the graffiti artists out there probably could make a decent living as graphic artists. I couldn’t “read” most of the words out there, and I got excited when I saw something other than words on the train cars. Needless to say, my long journey through the gallery gave me a chance to go slowly and take in a new dimension of the scenery I hadn’t expected to find. In certain territory, a tagger wouldn’t want to use double letters because that would signify intensification. I’d like to think that the misspell of “obsession” derived from that. “How well do you think you would do in the dark?” I remember in high school, we had a vandalism incident. In rather large letters on the entry wall to the school, someone wrote “?AUTORITY.” I imagine it would be easy to drop a letter in the dark with spray paint and perhaps some adrenaline bounding through your system.

I took all my spelling weanieness into Ordway, where for an early Saturday evening the town appeared pretty much deserted. Earlier down the road I saw a sign for Martin’s on Main as a likely restaurant to stop at. I found it but cruised the whole town just to see what I could see. It appeared that Martin’s was the only place open, so I went in to a sea of reserved tables in the empty restaurant.

A friendly woman dressed in hot pink greeted me.
“We’re having a party of 65 come in here soon, so if you want to sit, we have a couple of tables right here or in that room there. You order here.”
“Ok, give me a minute.”
“Oh, and here’s our cyclists log, if you would please sign it.”
I took the menu and the notebook and sat down to peruse their offerings. The snob in me couldn’t believe they had success selling menu items called “Slopper.” I went back up to the counter, “What’s the difference between a regular and smothered burrito?”
“The smothered burrito has shredded meat in it.”
“So then what’s the difference between a smothered burrito and a Garbage Pail?”
“The Garbage Pail has shredded beef and shredded pork in it. The smothered burrito just has one kind of shredded meat in it.”
“So the Garbage Pail is like the ‘Kitchen Sink’?”
“Yeah.”
My snob was out for sure. I couldn’t just find the amusement in the names they picked for food items. I out right refused to consider anything (even though they didn’t appeal) that made it sound like I was eating from a dumpster, trashcan, or pig trough. If I weren’t spending money, my attitude might be different. The menu definitely had a meat-heavy selection. I had a feeling the cyclists gravitated toward the burrito page.
The woman had a lot of information to offer for cyclists: “The store closes at 7 p.m. Most things aren’t open on Sunday. You may have a hard time in Eads. Do you have this map? Well, it has a lot of information on things. Haswell is pretty small. You probably aren’t going to find any water there. You might want to take extra water. I wouldn’t drink the water in town. It’s not going to make you sick, but it has a lot of chlorine in it and could make your tummy rumbly and not feel as well as you’d like. Where are you staying? Go to Gillian’s. It’s free. Go down Main and make a left on 9th. You’ll find it. She likes cyclists, takes them in. She has all sorts of stuff for you there. I’m not sure if she has filtered water. Most people leave at 4 a.m. to beat the heat.”
How long have you been here?

“A few years. I grew up in Arkansas, but have lived in Colorado for a while.”
“Why did you come to Ordway?”
“Cheap real estate. My husband and I bought an old 1920s farm house for $20,000.”
“Did it need a lot of work?”
“It needed some, but it was in pretty good shape. I was in Woodland Park near Colorado Springs doing mortgages. My husband wanted to start doing festivals, so we did that for a time and then got tired of being on the road all the time. So we decided to come here and open a restaurant.”

When I finished dinner, I looked through the cyclists log. Most of them had eaten a Garbage Pail…one rider even wrote, “…wow, 3 kinds of slow cooked animal…”. People had stayed at Gillian’s, in the hotel. All good.

I stopped at the store to get some water for the morning. In these parts, I wasn’t sure if anything would be open on Sunday, and if I was going to leave really early, I should get some “breakfast” too. Right outside the store, a local stopped me in a voice that hardly made a sound, “Where’s the rest of yeh?”
I looked at myself, “Here’s my feet, my hands,” I touched the top of my head, “I got my head on. I think I’m all here.”
“You’re just one, are yuh? Well, have a good time.”
“I will. Thanks. You too.”

Gillian’s place was the only residence down 9th to the left. I passed by a pen of goats with a small trash fire burning in a metal barrel in their pen. The pen abutted a couple of trailers with built on porches, landscaped areas. I rode around the modular home curious where to find anyone. I came around the house, and several people were having a party in a pool, a concreted object built up from the ground.
“I’m looking for Gillian.”
“A head popped up out of the water.”
“I’m Gillian. Go around to the gray trailer. You can stay there. It has a green porch and a veggie garden out front.” She had a kiwi accent. “I’ll show you around when I’m done here.”
“Yeah. Good. No problem.”
I went back the way I came and pushed my bike behind the fence where the gray trailer lived. A man came out from the other trailer.
“Hi. You need to talk to Gillian.”
“I did already. She sent me over here. This looks like the gray trailer. Is it?”
“Yeah. I’m Henry.”
“Nice to meet you Henry. I’m Heidi.”
“The restaurant and store close early.”
“I already took care of all that.”
“Well I’ll be.”

The trailer had the basics. Several mattresses were stacked against the walls. Gillian mentioned she was going to put bunk beds in there. At the moment, that’s all it was, a shell of a place. A table and chair stood at one end of the trailer and a few things were randomly plugged in at the other end on the nonfunctional sink. I came back out for my bags. A young guy stood at the fence.
“I’m Dale. I’ll show you around if you want.”
“Ok.”
“How long have you been here?”
“I’m just here visiting. Gillian’s my Mom. We just put the pool in.”
He showed me the bathroom, laundry, kitchen. “My mom used to be a cyclist. She knows how it is. It can get expensive staying places. She wants to help out however she can.”
“Awesome.”

I went back to the trailer and collected some things to take a shower. When I got back to the house, the shower was busy, so I waited in the kitchen. Gillian was having issues with water in her ears, and Mark – her husband I presume – was applying something to her ears to help. We chatted a little bit as Gillian busied herself sprinkling lemon oil and the furniture and wiping it with a cloth, dusting.
“Heidi, the shower’s free. Run, run and catch it before someone else does.”
After my shower, I hid out in the trailer. I thought I would sleep, somehow exhausted from the day and planning an early rise the next morning. Tired as I was, sleep didn’t come for a long while. I got up early the next morning with the goats and geese and jetted out before the household had risen.

The temperature changed dramatically.
Before I even got to The Max, I grabbed my water bottle a couple of times, “Wow, it’s hot.”
With all the excitement from the short-lived flash flood the night before and the anticipation of meeting friends in Pueblo, I forgot that the maximum security federal prison lives in Florence…until I passed it. And then there it was.
“Hello. Pose for a pic?”
I gave a little thought to who might be there. Since I’m not much of a news follower, not many came to mind. For a moment, I wondered if the man at the Riviera who told me he was visiting family was visiting here. I don’t even know if people in The Max get visitors. Despite who lives there, this facility began a new string of reflection for me on economic opportunities for rural communities.
“Peculiar sort of destination.” I understand the opportunity for work it brings a community. “I wonder how it measures up on bringing visitation to the community? More or less than bicyclists?” I know detention facilities have a purpose other than attracting visitors…still, how does it compare?

I said farewell to the mountains on this hot stretch of roadway. I could see the different elevation layers reaching above treeline. “I was way up there. And then I came zooming down. One day, woosh.”

Something about this area didn’t quite feel like Colorado to me, more like New Mexico. I stopped at one of the roadside interpretive signs and learned why.
The Comanches dominated this area in the 18th century under the leadership of Cuerno Verde – Green Horn. In 1779, a massive raid of Spanish, some 500 to Cuerno Verde’s 150, managed to kill the Comanche leader and put an end to warring in the area. This oust of the Comanches established Spanish rule and influence from the Arkansas River south into Mexico and made the area accessible to pioneer settlement. Several mining communities established in the area, but none of them produced fortunes for any length of time. European men coming into the area often married Indian or Hispanic women, alliances that often facilitated cross-cultural trade relations.

I passed through Wetmore. I joked that the counterpart to this place is Drymore, but it really is a wet spot in a dry place. Pretty.

For Pueblo, I wanted to get my bike a tune up, seemed like a nice thing to do for it having come this many miles (somewhere around 2,000…I’m not really counting) without any problems. Since Montana, I’ve been hearing about what’s ahead past the flats in the Ozarks and Appalachians. I wanted to be sure my gearing is in good shape for the steep hills. Gears kind of have a personality, and mine had a little more attitude than usual recently. We would get in disagreements about the best way to get up a hill. In Colorado, that’s a tolerable disagreement. I could imagine our relationship souring a bit in Missouri if we didn’t have a little therapeutic mediation.

It amazes me that with all the weight on the front of my bike, things have been working great. I thank the wheelmakers for doing an awesome job on the ones I ride. I picked up some spare spokes in Missoula, MT, and learned what to do with the spoke wrench I’ve been carrying should I ever need it. Later, I asked someone how spokes get broken. “Oh, usually you hit a hole in the road or something like that.” Super extra weight in the front and scads of holes, bridge joints, and roadway cracks, and everything still works beautifully. Thank you gear!

At the bike shop, they replaced my rear derailleur pulley system. “Too much lateral play.”
“Is that why it was chirping back there?”
“That’s part of it.”
I got a new chain too. Nothing worse than standing to make it up a steep part of a hill and the chain falls off. Worse even than that is to discover that not only has the chain come off the chain rings, but it’s hanging split. Yuck. That means some seriously dirty hands dealing with that. I have a chain tool and some extra chain pins just in case. I haven’t actually had to use them, but I’m sure I could figure out how all that works if necessary. I like the prevention approach. I’m ok with it. Maybe that means I made a bigger donation in Pueblo than I needed to, but that’s insurance. After all, I’m not out doing this to see how little economic impact I make in a community.

I also wanted to resupply on some of my food items. I used nearly all of the energy food I packed out, and I already started eating some of the bars that arrived in Saratoga via Cara. The limited number of larger towns on the route makes for rather limited options in this food genre. It’s kind of like getting the bike a tune up…my body responds better to certain kinds of fuel. If I can power my bicycle with the fuel it likes…yay!…we’re all happy. I knew there had to be a health food store in Pueblo.

Becky found me at Solar Roast. “Somehow I knew you would be here.”
Last summer Becky moved into my house in Eugene. What a crazy summer for both of us. I was house sitting all summer for friends who were in Italy, and architecture professor teaching study abroad, and the whole family went. I wouldn’t pass up the opportunity either. I took care of the cats and rode up the rather steep hill to their house, “training.” Most of the time, I walked my bike through the park. Becky spent the summer sorting out her own transition…relationship change, work change…she could do anything, but what? One thing I learned early on, she liked to make pie! I had a pie song…a woman making pie, a way to clear her head and heart…’it’s Monday and I’m making pies.’ We played the song loudly one evening, and it became the summertime Becky anthem.

We went to a vegetarian restaurant along the riverfront for dinner and sat outside among the market vendors and Thursday evening entertainers. My health food store stop became a dessert destination. My brain wants to make a pattern out of numbers, and the Vitamin Cottage’s hours stopped me in my tracks. “8:04 and 6:06? Why not 8:08 or 6:03…or 6:04 for that matter, it’s still divisible by 2 then?” In we went, and I took my usual protracted walk through the store. “My goodness, look at how many different kinds of bars they have here.” I didn’t want anything different, just the kind I usually get, but I hadn’t been able to find them most places I stopped. My body at this mileage is specific. I don’t argue. We had nearly finished our sweep of the store. Becky came out of the vitamin aisle with a keg-sized container of protein powder, 70 servings. “Here, Heidi, you need this,” and she proceeded to lift it up and “drink” the whole container in one go. Oh comedy. Good timing putting forth some out of scale entertainment. As I stood in front of the chocolate bars, someone asked me if I needed help finding anything – what, I wasn’t in the right spot in front of the chocolate?! “I’m looking for….jerky.” Becky laughed.

“You said that as if you were embarrassed. They sell meat here.”
“Well….” I think she was right. Maybe that was one lingering bit of me that wanted to hide from my body wanting to eat animal flesh. Someone might know I’m no longer vegan. That would be like getting a ride while I’m on a cross-country bike ride. The jerky was right around the corner from the chocolate, but unfortunately they didn’t have much in stock. I didn’t get any. I did notice that they carried the Wyoming buffalo jerky and I noted that I hadn’t seen any Wyoming jerky in Wyoming.

We camped at Pueblo Lake State Park, had a nice long chat at the picnic table eating our largely melted pint of ice cream in the dark. We set the tent up at sunset.
“Rainfly?”
“It might be kind of nice without it.”
“We could gamble.” Both of us checked the sky. “Let’s gamble. We can always put it on if we need to.” Who knew if the clouds would move in, if they would move in with rain. The still, warm night breathed a softness to it that begged for sleeping in the open air, and it was just warm enough that we both had that slight stickiness to our skin.
Right before bed, Astroboy flew in. “Sweet!” I like image dialogue.

After doing some stretching in the morning, Becky announced, “I’m going to swing.” We camped right next to the playground.
“Oooh, that sounds like a good idea. Me too.”
Around 8 a.m. we packed up and headed into town with no particular destination in mind. We entered the downtown area and Becky pulled over. “Do you want to go to Hopscotch? I’ve never been there before. It’s a bakery. They’re people I work with.”
“Sounds good to me.”
Mary sat on the bench outside her shop in an apron dusted with flour. Becky introduced us, and Mary introduced her mother who sat next to her drinking a coffee. Another person clad in chef clothing came out. Becky knew him too, and we did introductions all around again. Becky and I got tea inside and came back out to chat some more. Friends continued to arrive. One man who’d been away in Turkey and whom we’d just heard about showed up. Happy reunion all around.
Becky and I took our leave of Hopscotch and walked to the bike shop. We passed Bingo Burger where the chef I met at Hopscotch watered his planter veggie garden.
Becky gardens and cooks and has turned her work into helping low income people learn how to make healthy food choices on a limited budget, “When is your corn going to be done?”
“In about a week.”
“What are you going to do with it?”
“We’ll probably make a corn salsa or something like that. You should check out the xeriscape garden just past the veggies.” He’d made the most of a triangular lot with little to no landscapable area. I couldn’t believe that he managed to get a producing veggie garden from seed out of the narrow wall planter next to the sidewalk. But what a difference it made to the feel of the place. Vegetables grown on site used in the food made right there. “Cool.”

On the way back to Becky’s car after picking up my bike, we came across a butterfly on the sidewalk. I got excited, “It’s still alive!” What a relief to see a living butterfly after so much death along the road. Becky picked it up so it wouldn’t get stepped on and set it in the planter.
I managed to get all the food I bought the night before crammed into my panniers. Odd how the volume of my bags didn’t seem to increase, but the weight certainly did. “Ugh.”
“I need to get back.”
“Yeah. Thank you so much for coming down to meet me. It’s great to see you again.”
“I’m so glad we got to see each other. See you again soon.”
She headed north, and I wobbled south back down the bike route in hunt for Barbara’s house.

Barbara lives in a historic district in Pueblo. When I asked her about it, she gave me a brief history of the area.
“Two men, Goodnight and Dittmer, bought up a lot of property in this area to make a real estate development. By the time they were ready to start building, they realized they couldn’t afford to do the development. They sold a large piece of the property back to the City, and that became the City park, which you rode through. Eventually they began developing the area for residential, and my house was built in the 19teens.”

I walked in while she was still at work. Old wood floors, two bedrooms, one bathroom, kitchen, and social areas at the front of the house all oriented around a short, central hallway. “Cute.”
She came home in the early afternoon. “Tell me all about your trip. What prompted you to do this? How did you train for it?”
Barbara is a friend of a friend of the family.

My Dad went to dental school with Patrick. In my memory, Patrick and Mickey were the ones who came to visit on a regular enough basis that I understood they were part of the family. Plus, Patrick always had some wild air about him. Pictures from one snowy visit in Cheyenne have us watching a purple “smoke grenade” go off in the field in front of our house. We were scheming to get even with a neighbor across the street who didn’t appreciate my brother’s approach to setting off fireworks. Patrick fully supported the idea and, of course, brought some tools to help. I remember less of Patrick being a dentist and more of different projects he took on over the years, like when he went to gunsmithing school. As we chatted over dinner, he revealed that he now could be called a luthier; he had an engineered guitar under construction. “A normal guitar uses 5% of its energy to make sound, the rest becomes heat. With this engineered version, 8% becomes sound. That may not sound like much, but that doubles the sound!”

Mickey is a nurse who is quick to smile and laugh. She’s the kind of person who makes you feel good just being in her presence. One winter my parents and I went to see them at their house in Aguilar. The house itself was still under construction, but they had a modular home on the property that they were living in temporarily. The spot is gorgeous, about 10 miles up a dirt road in the clutch of the Spanish Peaks. We were entrusted to bring vanilla ice cream. When we got to Aguilar, the snow had piled up, and we waited a long time at the turn for the snowplow to come down. When it did, it seemed to have knocked the top six inches of powder off the road, leaving another foot of fresh snow beneath. My Dad took the road in his little car, and we got most of the way up the road before sliding into a ditch. We all piled out and started walking to the house. Patrick came down the road and picked us up but couldn’t turn around right there. He slid off the road too, right at my Dad’s car, and I couldn’t believe he didn’t crash into it also and that he managed to get his vehicle out. We went all the way out to the main road to turn around and then went back to the house. My feet were frozen by the time we arrived, and the vanilla ice cream was still frozen too! Mickey set up a warm water bath to reheat my feet, and we marveled at the pretty colors they turned. A few years later, I crashed at their place after backpacking up around Blanca. The place looked much different in summer. Mickey took good care of me, offering welcome and a friendly place for me to overnight and recover from my adventure.

Barbara is a good friend of Mickey’s but has known both Mickey and Patrick for over 15 years. “Did you meet Mickey through nursing?” Barbara is an oncology nurse.
“I started out in social work and met Mickey at a clinic where we both worked. I knew immediately that we would work well together. Same when I met Patrick.” Barbara grew up in New Jersey, like many people I know, but has lived in different towns in Colorado for 30 years. She also lived in Ireland.

While Barbara caught up on her paperwork, I set about making piles in her living room of the food I picked up at the store. I didn’t want to ride with all that stuff even though it fit in the bags. Send it ahead, give yourself a little treat-filled care package. I also told myself that I would send my cooler weather gear home after I came out of the mountains. Funny, that was the small pile. I wrapped up three packages.
“Is there a post office nearby?”
She gave me directions, and off I went, two packages slug in a bag over my shoulder and one on my rack. I could have put them all on the front, but I remembered the broken flagger say, “Don’t put a backpack across your handlebars.” I figured all three packages would be the equivalent, and I didn’t want to break my neck on a quick run to the post office to get rid of weight on my bike.
When I came back, I noticed a family picture in the spare room.
“Wow, you have a large family. Are you the girl in the center?”
“No, I’m the oldest girl, the one on the right side in the picture.”
We launched into conversation over family, siblings mostly. She has six siblings, grew up as a family of nine.
Soon, it was time to meet Patrick and Mickey for dinner, and we went to B Street across from the old train depot. Mickey remembered me as a vegan and couldn’t believe I would eat anything. Barbara started us off with fried green avocados because they sound really weird and taste delicious. My appetite knows no bounds biking all day. Whatever it was, I wanted to try it.
We had a fantastic dinner, swapping stories all ways around. We went back to Barbara’s house so Patrick and Mickey could get a big jar of honey from Barbara. We had more conversation there, a dynamic rotation of conversing in different pairs and a collective. We all had much to catch up on.
After they left, Barbara went out to change someone’s IV bag, and I fell into sleep. She had the windows of the house open and the fan on to take advantage of the cool night air. The wind picked up in those dark hours, and through my sleep I became aware of another sound like the fan but another instrument in the nighttime symphony. I got up just before five. Depending on the day and location, this is pretty normal for me (or even late). The electricity flickered on and off for a while and then went out completely.
“You know the power’s out?”

“Yeah, it was on for a little while when I got up. What do you figure a limb fell or something?”
“Who knows. Sometimes the squirrels do it. You can hear the line explode. I didn’t hear any of that though.”
Right as my computer needed juice, the power came back on. I set up in the kitchen over tea and typing while Barbara got ready for work. She had a busy weekend, starting her Saturday with an IV bag change at 7 a.m.
“When you leave, just lock the door. Take whatever you need.”
“Thank you so much!” I got a picture of her in the morning light as she headed out.

I had my usual rush preparing to leave. Couldn’t find my water bottles though. I hoped they were still at the bike shop, and if not, well, I’d be picking some up there. No way I was heading into flatland and humidity without water bottles. I rode out the bike route again. The wind brought with it cooler temperatures.
“It’ll be more like 85 instead of 100,” Barbara told me as she left.
The sky had a cover of cloud, and the temperatures felt just fine.
I recovered my water bottles from the shop and headed east, into a headwind.

The light breeze whispering past my ears on the roadway came through distinctly in that susurration, “Go to Guffey. Go to Guffey.”
I turned up the road. “This is sick. It’s not just up the road a mile, it’s UP the road a mile. Don’t make it easy to want to visit. Probably most people are more desperate about getting to a place than I am here at early afternoon.” The road tricked me again and again winding around and up.
When I emerged on the flat, I saw a café just down the hill. I went there. The seven dirt bikers who passed me on the road earlier sat out on the patio. I walked in the front door feeling like a stickler for propriety. One couple sat at a table inside. I walked through the whole café evaluating the seating. I went back toward the door and approached the bar.
“You want something to eat?” a young, attractive brown-haired woman said between doing this and that.
“I’m not sure. Maybe.”
“Our specials are on the board. Here’s our menu.”
I couldn’t see. The café seemed dark compared to the bright day outside. I couldn’t see with my sunglasses on, and I certainly couldn’t see without them. “I’m a bit visually impaired,” I looked down closely at the menu while I fumbled to get my glasses out of their little sack, “where’s the board?”
“We have a green chili burrito, and a chicken fried steak special.”
“Sure, I’ll get something to eat.” They had cherry pie too. I felt recovered from my unpleasant cherry pie experience in Cambridge, ID, willing to give cherry pie another chance. I couldn’t just have cherry pie though.
I sat down at the bar with a view out to the patio and the hummingbird feeder. “You sure have some regulars here, don’t you?”
“Crazy little birds. They showed up when it was still snowing this year.”
“Where I’m from in Eugene, there are some hummingbirds that stay around all year. They depend on the feeders to stay alive through the winter. The migratory species shows up later, when it gets warmer out.”
“Huh.” She was like a hummingbird too, buzzing in and out between the patio, the bar, the kitchen window, the table behind me. “Can I get you something to drink?”
“You know, I’d really like a hot tea.” I felt sleepy all day, like I didn’t quite get a decent cup to get me going in the morning. Could have been being up all night tossing and turning with the ghost in my room too.
“You want just Lipton or something? I don’t have any hot water made up, but I can. It’ll just take a couple of minutes.”
“Hot water sounds great. I have a tea bag with me.” I like that their tea cups looked like Steve’s back home. I knew it would be a good cup coming from a mug like that, like a cup of familiarity to set me right. Just what I wanted.
“You probably don’t want a beer or anything. That’s not a good way to hydrate.”
“Nah, no beer. Tea isn’t really a way to hydrate either. Water is best.”
“Do you want some water?”
“Yeah. That’s a good idea.” I added the water glass to my collection of empty water bottles, bag, camera, sunglasses, and other personal items piled on the bar. I had a regular fortress going on, kind of building on the preexisting structure of glasses of straws, condiments, and other bar tending items.
“You may have to wait a bit for your food. Those guys out there got in before you.”
“That’s fine. I’m not in a hurry. Do you live here?”
“I live four miles up the road. I’m from Florida.”
“What brought you here?”
“Hurricanes.”
“Hurricanes?”
“I got sick of showing up to work with the power out. I said never again.”
“So you moved up here because it’s as far away from the ocean as you can possibly get and still be in the States?”
“Something kinda like that.”
“What do you like about it?”
“The locals are idiots. Have you heard about the Chicken Fly? It’s what we’re famous for here in Guffey, if we’re famous for anything.”
“Tell me.”
“Every year on the 4th of July, we have this big event. They build a stage with a mailbox on it. Mailbox is open on both ends. Everyone who comes gets to pick a chicken. You take your chicken and stuff it in the mailbox. Then you hit the chicken in the ass with a plunger, and whoever’s chicken flies the farthest at the end of the day wins.”
She adeptly got Joe another beer while he helped himself to a pack of cigarettes by the bar and then rung up his check all in one go.
Another couple walked in and sat down two seats away from me at the bar.
She swooped in. “We have two specials, a green chili burrito and a chicken fried steak. Can I get you something to drink?” She spun around, got their drinks, spun back around and set them on the bar, “You know what you want to eat?”
“This says ‘zucchini rounds.’ Can I get ‘em square?”
“It might take a little while. I’d have to go cut them into squares.”
“Well, if I can’t get Zucchini Squares, I need a minute.”
“No problem.” She went over to the kitchen window. “Hon, he wanted potato salad on this. And did you get the mayo on the hot dog? That’s weird, isn’t it? They’re from North Carolina.” She delivered the hot dog and other sandwich baskets out to the patio and came back to the couple at the bar. “Do you know what you want?”
“I want Zucchini Rounds.”
“Well, they’re kinda oval. You could bite the ends off of them, then they’d be rounds.”
“Quit giving her a hard time.”
“Who’s giving who a hard time? I’ll have the green chili burrito.”
“And I’ll have the chicken fried steak.”

The North Carolina guys came in to settle up. The first one asked, “What’s your name?”
“Birdie. Like the animal. I almost was Priscilla. I’m glad it worked out the way it did.”
A second guy settled up, payed for two of them, “What’s your name?”
“Birdie.” She flapped with a pen in one hand and the check in another.
She came back to me. “Can I get you anything else?”
“I think I’d like a piece of cherry pie.”
“You want that warmed up? Ice cream?”
“Warmed up sounds great, but I don’t need ice cream. Thanks!”
Cherry pie redeemed.
I collected my pile of items and went to the register.
“How many days are you out doing this?”
“I’ve allowed 80 days.”
“How do you get that much time off work?”
“Well, I’m in school right now. I also do some work for the county at home. I’ve been working on roadway tourism projects. I’m really curious about bicycle tourism and rural economic development. My experiences out on the road inform the work I do, and when I get home I ought to have the information I need to write the management plans for the roadway projects. I’m doing work while I’m out here, so I’m not really taking time off of work. I’m doing fieldwork.”
She’d been nodding as I answered and said as I did, “not really taking time off work.” “You need to talk to Bill Soux. He has the cabins.”
“Yeah. I was hoping to talk to him. People mentioned the cabins.”
“Tell him what you just told me. If you go down the street to the garage, he’ll be there. He’ll be wearing a black t-shirt, a black cap, and has a white ponytail. He wears that all the time. I don’t know why today would be any different.”
I followed her directions and walked slowly, digesting. I definitely needed a little walk before I got back on my bike. I found the garage and giggled at the skeleton hanging out front and all the other odd, creepy weirdnesses everywhere. I knew I would like Bill. I walked into the dark of the garage straight into the alligator head with a hand in its mouth, “I’m looking for Bill.”
“I’m Bill.”
“Birdie sent me down here and said I should tell you I’m studying bicycle tourism and rural economic development. This is neat stuff.”
“Yeah.”
He had someone in the shop with him, and they were talking about parts and things. I immediately got distracted by the massive assemblage of skeletons, parts, old stoves, junk, stuff, stuff, and stuff.
I walked back outside and took some pictures outside the garage. The other guy left, and Bill came out and handed me a key on a rough ring in the shape of a heart and belched, “Here. You should go look in the museum at the town hall. Just leave the key here when you’re done.”
“I like this, it’s great.”
“Come here, check this out.” He pointed to an iguana skeleton on a trapeze in his shop. “Look at this.” He picked up an alligator paw. “I got this at the Alligator Farm. I’m the only one they’ve let in their graveyard.”
“Alligator Farm?”
“You know, by Great Sand Dunes.”
“Great Sand Dunes. … Oh yeah! I know what you’re talking about.” I drove past the Alligator Farm a few times on various journeys climbing Little Bear, Blanca, and Ellingwood, but I never stopped at the Farm. It always seemed like a peculiar place for alligators, in the middle of the southern Colorado desert, out by Alamosa. He gave me a tour of the garage, picking out special items here and there to draw my attention to, telling me a story about where each object came from.
“I haven’t touched this in a while. I’m an electrician. Do you want a beer? Probably not huh. Water?”
“Thanks, no. I just came from Freshwater, and I’m quite full. Digesting.”
The phone rang, and he answered it.
We went outside.
“That’s the old stage stop there. 1896. Right next to it is the original Guffey jail. You have your camera? Yeah, go into the museum. The BikeCentennial certificate is up and to the right after you walk in.”
“What’s with the bike sign out on the highway? What does it mean?”
“We had to fight and fight to get that. Lots of people pass by here and then they end up in the middle of that “…” without any services. It lets cyclists know that we’re here.”

I walked slowly through the museum. Looked a lot more like an extension of his personal collections – but less dusty – than it did a museum. I have a small drawer of toys at home full of stuff like this. Bill seemed to have nearly the entire town in his collection with installations throughout. He came up with the Chicken Fly and produces the event every year. The BikeCentennial certificate says that he was one of the original 4000 people who rode the TransAmerica Trail in 1976. I thought he made a point of getting Guffey on the map. Maybe he did, but he rode it also.

I returned the key and walked back to my bike.
“This is a bike-friendly town. I think it’s bike-friendly because of Bill. Hell, from what I can tell, it’s pretty much his town. But it only takes one person who cares a lot to make a small town bike-friendly. They wouldn’t fight to get a bicycle sign out on the highway with “Guffey” under it if they didn’t think a mutually beneficial synergy came from the cyclists in the town. It cracks me up that this is the art here. I’ll have to come back for the Chicken Fly.

Hypoxia at altitude affected me, and it didn’t just make me suck air climbing Hoosier Pass. Several times in different places I noticed a quasi intoxicated feeling in my head…mostly just a spacey sensation like I couldn’t quite grab onto the moment – like a fish it would slip from my grip at the last moment. And of course, altitude amplified my already narcoleptic tendency – or need – to sleep.

My friend Tricia in Portland often says, “I love sleep.” Sleep comes to us like a special treat or hobby – delicious, indulgent, rejuvenating…ahhh. When I rode from Eugene to San Francisco last summer, I looked forward to sleeping. It stood out on my list of accomplishments along with moving myself under my power the whole way. At home, I sleep well, but I find I don’t let myself sleep as long as I would like because some task always has a hold on my time. Out on this ride, I can’t help but need to sleep. Sometimes I don’t have a choice about it. And the tasks also get me up, or the chipmunks crawling over my face or the wind or the light changing…or my dreams.

In Silverthorne, I had vivid dreams, and people popped into them who I haven’t seen in dreamland before. In Fairplay, they woke me, tossed and turned me. I managed to go back to sleep for a little while, but then I got up and went downstairs to spend some time in the hotel lobby. Last summer, I truly enjoyed finding the historic hotels in the coastal towns and letting myself feel at home wherever I was. The Fairplay Hotel had that feel to it, a huge building for this little town built during the 19th-century boom in Colorado. A couple from Florida came out into the lobby separately while I sat there drinking tea and chatted with me some. They’d been on vacation for a month and were just about to head back to Florida.
“Where did you get the coffee?”
“In the room there. I’m not sure that anyone has been up to get breakfast ready. There’s some stuff in there.”
He went in, and I heard the microwave ding. I’d done the same thing with the water for my tea because the thermos dispenser said hot water but I wouldn’t say that adequately described what was in there. It was easy enough to heat it.
A little before 8 a.m., a woman came in and started doing things at the lobby desk. I resisted my impulse to immediately ask her about the internet connection. She did a few things and then finally got settled into some tasks and the morning at the hotel.
“Good morning.” I went up to the lobby desk. I noticed a history of the hotel there and started to read it. “I wonder if you could reset the internet? The connection worked fine last night, but now I can’t get anything.”
“Let me check here and see if it’s up. Oh, it’s not. I’ll go reset it. Should take only a minute.”
“Cool. Thanks.” She disappeared for a moment and came back. “I didn’t know this hotel had a ghost story. I see here that it does though. Strange because I had ghosty dreams last night that kept waking me up.”
“Oh really? What were they about?”
“It was a ghost cat. Not really scary, but I realized it was a ghost and talked to it, asked it what it needed. It came in and did cat things in the room, rubbed against the bed, hopped up on the bed. It talked too, but I guess that’s not really a cat thing.”
“I stayed in a hotel one time where there was a ghost. It was really freaky. It crawled across the mattress. The way the room was set up, the bed filled most of the space, and you couldn’t fully open the door to walk in because the bed was there. I’d just gotten in and managed to get my bag in the room and shuffled around the door when I saw these knee prints in the mattress. It was a memory foam kind of mattress. When I talked to the hotel keeper about it, they said that there was a ghost that liked to crawl across the beds.”

Yup, nothing like starting the morning swapping ghost stories.
I continued standing at the lobby desk while she worked on other tasks. The woman who’d checked me in the previous evening came downstairs with a couple of dogs.
“Why did I have cat dreams? You have dogs here.”
As the innkeeper came down she asked, “Did you get breakfast out?”
The two of them went into the dining room, and I went upstairs to change into my cycling clothes and get my bags.
I came back downstairs and went into the dining room. I piled a plate with baked things. I wasn’t sure if I’d make it to Pueblo – over 100 miles – but I knew it would be a long day and wanted some big fuel to get me going. I came back out to the lobby and balanced the plate on my knees. Now that Barbara could see I was a cyclist, we had some other things to talk about besides ghosts.
“How have you enjoyed your stay here?”
“It’s been really good. I came in right before the storm last night. It took a little while for the hot water to come on, but it eventually did.”

“They should mention that it takes a while for the water. Do you know how it’s heated?”
“I don’t know. Is it on demand or something?”
“Wood. It’s wood-fired hot water.”
“Wow. I figured it just had a ways to go because this building is so big. After you’ve been around old buildings for a while, I think you get used to waiting for hot water.”
“The building fell into disrepair for a while. We’ve only been open again since February. It was closed for two years. They had to replace over 200 sections of pipe.”
“Do you get many cyclists coming through?”
“We get a fair bit. The nicest people. Motorcyclists too. It’s amazing how nice and appreciative they are. It is a small town, we’re not like a big place in the city.”
“I’m headed cross country. I gave you a window decal last night. See it there on the door?”
“I really admire you for doing this. We had a cyclist stay here the other night who liked it so much he said he would write in to get the map corrected. Apparently our old phone number is on there.”
“It’s a great spot. I really appreciate that you give a cyclist rate.”
“We used to live in South Carolina. I worked at an inn there. We lived in the town where they met to secede from the Union in the 1850s. Tons of history in that place.”
“What brought you out here?”
“The kids are in the Denver area, and we wanted to be closer to the grandchildren. Even though we don’t live really close, it’s a lot closer than South Carolina.”
Some other people came in from the street, curious about the hotel. I finished breakfast and loaded up my bike out on the sidewalk. I came back in to say goodbye, “Thanks for chatting and the room. I really enjoyed it.”
“Be safe, Heidi. Thank you!”

I nearly missed my turn just outside of town because I was still gawking at the place. At one point, Fairplay wanted to become a gambling town. I wondered how that would have affected it, and I didn’t see that it had altered much. Did they never get gambling? Did it come and leave quickly? They have a great name to be a gambling town. But maybe the town name made it impossible for it to be that? I admit, I wrote a postcard to an outlaw while I was there, having a wild west altitude-induced fantasy on a card I picked up in Saratoga. Fair play. I made more than one story there.

The landscape between Fairplay and Canon City gave me ample opportunity to unwind my experience. Much like Wyoming, the roads went through largely unsettled and untouched territory. Unlike Wyoming, the rolling hills and mountains to the east brought some enclosure to the landscape. I came through Hartsel, a modest collection of buildings on the rail line. I doubt the train comes through here anymore, but it’s a watering hole, a town where people need one. I turned again in Hartsel onto a road signed for bikes. “Is it a bikeway?” As I experienced it, “Yes.” Extremely few cars passed me on that whole long stretch of road. “Why is this road even here? Who comes out here?” Every once in a while I would pass a ranch. One had a sign posted, “Auction June 12.” “That’s a bit outdated. I guess they sold cows? Or was there something else there?” A pink mobile home looked tipped and half sunk next to the corral. A much smaller RV trailer appeared level next to the mobile home.

I climbed a pass. This one had no sign, but it looked like a pass, and it didn’t fake me out on the other side by turning and climbing higher. I knew I would eventually get to Guffey. I originally planned to stay there instead of Fairplay. After the long empty ride to nearly get there, I was super glad I stopped in Fairplay. It would have been after dark, and I would be in the middle of what? Guffey had a mysterious air about it. Mike from St. Louis had specified, “Stay in the cabins at Guffey. They’re in the town, not on the road.” I came around a bend and saw a sign for Rita’s, one mile up the road, a couple of buildings, and a sign that puzzled me…it said Guffey. I stopped and looked at my map. It was a mile off route, but there wasn’t anything else for another 30 miles or so. Apart from Hartsel about 30 miles back, there hadn’t been any services either. “I’m curious, I’ll go check it out.”

Back from Guffey and down the road to Canon City. The profile on my map showed a precipitous descent, and I finally encountered it a few miles outside of town. “Weeee!” For the first time, I felt the equivalent downhill of climbing McKenzie Pass in Oregon, 20 miles of traffic-less, no-pedaling-necessary, curvy and smooth road, 2000’ elevation change, joyous flight. A storm had been brewing while I was in Guffey, and it still stood out in the distance, making it seem later out than it really was. I picked up a busy segment of road from Salida and Buena Vista (they call it B-you-na Vista here…or BV for short, which I think people say because they can’t stand to mispronounce the word.). I spent some time in Salida and Poncha Springs years ago when I took my first Wilderness First Responder course. Michael Ambrose. He had quite a sense of humor, a 2-year old daughter named Madeline. During one of the training scenarios, I had been hang gliding and crashed, was unconscious, wearing a helmet and supposed to stop breathing if the trainees didn’t deal with my airway. Just to prove how much he liked me, he poured water in the crotch of my pants. Lucky trainees got to discover I’d pissed myself also. On our final scenario training, I got to sneak past everyone, lay in the stream and work up a good case of hypothermia.

The road took me left, away from Poncha Springs along a roadway paved with pinkish rock, toward the Royal Gorge. At the Cactus Hotel, I continued straight instead of toward the Gorge, past massive retail rock operations. I liked how all the rocks sat in colored piles: green, black, pink, white, beige…. I know I’ve been through Canon City before, but it didn’t play any memory music when I went through, so I just went through. The clock told me I should stop soon, that another 40 miles to Pueblo would be too much. Florence was on my mind, so I kept on to there. Just outside of Canon City, the lightning began. I pedaled faster through some large rain drops. Ahead, the rail crossing had traffic stopped, it’s bell clanging and lights flashing. I didn’t see a train. “Ghost train.” I considered running the barricade. I only partially considered running the barricade. Happily, not a moment after I unclipped to wait, the candycane-striped arms went up and onward I pedaled, faster in high gear. Six miles to Florence. Four miles to Florence. I pedaled out of the big drops outside of Canon City, passed a cyclist going into the storm. “I wonder if he works at the prison and bike commutes?” And then Florence. “I made it!”

I rode along the street looking for lodging. The wind picked up suddenly, and with it came rain. I continued riding. “Wow, this is the kind of rain that’s actually going to get me wet, not like that other rain that seemed to evaporate once it touched me.” I looked at the ground, watching the raindrops. “Is it snowing? Is it hail?” Some little white things that seemed more solid than rain would land on the ground. When they landed on me, it was kind of like a splat. Then they got bigger. “That’s hail.” A few hit my helmet, and the sound confirmed my assessment. I hadn’t passed anything that looked like a commercial area. “I didn’t think Florence was that big.” The residential area, with nice looking historic homes flanked both sides of the street among the large, mature street trees. The rain and hail started coming in sheets. “I needed to take a shower. And, yeah, laundry too.” But mostly it felt like I was swimming in a pool of dirty water Heidi stew. Ew. I stopped under a large tree. It offered some relief from the deluge. I watched the storm. Wave after wave of water. I know storms out west can be short-lived, violent perhaps, but brief. It didn’t look like it was letting up. I looked behind me, “How many other tall trees are there around here?” I started to concern myself with lightning strike and limb fall from the wind. “Well, some big trees back there. This isn’t the tallest in the group.” Still, something from my childhood said, “Don’t stand under a tree in an electrical storm.” “Right.” I pedaled on. I couldn’t see the road for all the water rushing everywhere and the splatter all over my glasses. It was more than riding my bike in a continuous shower. I saw a gigantic tree limb fall on a side street.
“Look, a gas station.”

I pulled in under the awning at the pumps. I stood there for a while until a lightning bolt came down close by. The crack of thunder came so loud and abruptly I flinched. I looked up and around me.
“This whole place is metal. It could blow up. I’m outta here.”
I went across the parking lot to a restaurant and stood under the entry roof. I parked my bike against the wall and watched water gush from the gutters and drip over the sides of them. It wasn’t cold out, but the storm did not let up. I stood and waited. I tried to look out into the town to see if any of my hoped for destinations came into view…anything that looked like lodging or a downtown or I don’t know what. Nothing. Gray. Sheets of rain. Waves in the roadway.
Someone pulled in to the restaurant…or were they there already. The SUV pulled into the handicapped spot right at the edge of the awning and a man got out. He didn’t seem to mind the rain blowing in from the side, and we talked a little bit. He went inside. Someone came out and invited me in, “Would you like a cup of tea?”
“Uh, ok.” I went in.
“Please, sit.”
“Are you sure? I’m sopping wet.”
“It’s ok. Here.”
“Thanks. It’s not really cold out there, just wet.”
The man who talked to me got his take out. “Do you want a ride? I think the hotel is on the way out to where I’m going back home.”
“Ok.”
handed the tea back to the woman who’d given it to me,“Thank you,” and went out to load my bike into the back of the SUV. We went a couple of blocks and the inside of the car windows steamed up, our glasses fogged up and were bespattered with rain. He pulled over.
“Are there any napkins there in the door. We’re not going anywhere unless I can wipe my glasses off.”
“Yes. Here.”
“Here, have one for yourself.”
“Thanks. I have all sorts of stuff running into my eyes right now.” My eyes burned. Sweat, sunscreen…who knows what else. There wasn’t a part of me that didn’t have water still running all over the place.
“Here it is. Look, it stopped raining. Figures.”
“Thanks so much. What’s your name?”
“Joe. Joe Harris.”
“Thank you so much, Joe. I really appreciate the kindness.”

I walked into the Riviera, and a diminutive woman with a foreign accent came to the counter.
“Do you have room for one?”
“Yes. We have special rate for cyclists. You are by yourself?”
“I am.”
“Brave.”
I shrugged. “Do you get many cyclists coming through here?”
“Yes. Not so much this year. Usually lots of French, German, other cyclists. Not much this year.”
I wanted to give her a decal, but I gave the two I had handy to Bill in Guffey. Just as well, they’d probably have been totally soaked. I would give her one in the morning.
“We have laundry.”
“On site?”
“Yes. Coin operated. Just there, outside.”
“Excellent. Thanks!”
“Here. You’re in room 5, just across there,” she pointed. “It’s a big room. I think you will like. We have coffee here in the morning. Only coffee. You are brave. Be careful.”
“Thanks!”

I peeled off my wet clothes and took a shower. Happily, the bomb proof Ortlieb panniers Tricia loaned me kept everything inside nice and dry during the epic dousing. I pulled out some dry clothes and went in hunt of some quarters to do laundry. I noticed the innkeeper duck into the side yard right as I came out. Another hotel guest stood outside his room, smoking a cigarette.
“Did you stay dry?”
“Yeah.”
“I got totally soaked. I’m on the hunt for quarters to do laundry. Are you on vacation?”
“I’m here visiting family.”
He didn’t seem particularly happy about anything, a kind of neutral to slightly downcast air about him.
“Do you happen to know the wifi code?”
“No. Good luck getting it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m sure she’ll give it to you, but she’s impossible to understand.”
“Well, I’m going to go hunt for quarters.”

I walked down the main street in town looking for a convenience store or something. I saw a lot of nice buildings and shops. Looked like they were renovating the old downtown hotel on the corner. Nice building. “I hope that’s what they’re doing.” The Elks lodge across the street from the Riviera was all boarded up, but it looked like they still had bingo there on Tuesday nights. The bank on the main street had a nice look to it, but also had some alterations. “I know those windows are not original.” Not much was open, and I didn’t feel like getting dinner. I’d eaten pretty well in Guffey. I walked back to the hotel.

“Can I get some quarters for laundry?”
“Yes, here. I just went and looked in the garden, and everything is fallen over. What a mess! And so much work to clean it up.”
“I noticed earlier that some big limbs had come down on the trees in town. A lot of the plants are all laying down from the water and wind.”
“Yes, I will have to wait for the water to dry up a little bit. Tomorrow. We need the water. It hasn’t rained for three weeks.”
“Wow. You got three weeks worth all at once! Do you have the wifi code?”
“You have a laptop with you?!”
“I do.”
She wrote the numbers on an index card. Even her numbers had an accent and reminded me of how Claudia, my roommate in college, wrote. Claudia is German, but her family lives in Venezuela. She lives in Italy now with her husband, Greg, who lived in Ecology House with us our senior year. Their romance stuck. They have two children now. Before she gave me the numbers, I thought the innkeeper might be Swiss. Looking at the card, I thought ‘Maybe Swiss, maybe German. Right around there.’ “Thanks!” I took my quarters and the index card, started laundry and connected.