TransAm Day #29 Eads, CO - Ordway, CO
TransAm Day #29
June 23, 2018
Eads, CO - Ordway, CO
65 Miles
Ride Time 5:21 Hours
Tour Total Miles 2213
I slept great last night at the Cobblestone Inn after fourteen thousand beers. I only wish that Steve and Don hadn’t gotten up so early. Early meaning 6am mountain time which I guess was 7am central, and far from the 3:30am regimen. Still, I could have used more sleep.
I stayed up really late with Don drinking beer and talking about old times. He’s got a really sharp memory and is able to remember the details of a lot of old stories, some of which it'd be better if he forgot.
The three hungover boys had breakfast in the hotel lobby. I made myself a waffle. Afterwards we said our goodbyes and Steve and I were on the road. It felt appropriate to be wearing my Bouré cycling sweater from Durango Colorado. I bought it in 2009 to console myself after my father died. This is it’s first trip to Colorado.
I neglected to apply chamois butter this morning. My saddle was new when I began the tour and by this point has pretty much molded itself to my behind. I felt pretty ragged from all the festivities last night. I was lucky that the wind was quiet when I began, but that didn’t last.
I saw a lot of wildlife today. Early in the ride, I passed a fox with a big bushy tail. Steve pointed out a doe and two fawns underneath a railroad bridge. I’ve been passing dozens of black beetles walking across the white line. I suppose they’re the miniature desert version of the turtles I saw back east. I don’t try to save the beetles though, in fact I try to run them over. I have a stronger attachment to reptiles than insects.
This brings us to our second state pronunciation lesson. The last syllable of Colorado is pronounced doe, like a female deer, and not da like the Russian word for yes. Colorado is derived from the Spanish word meaning colorful.
A headwind picked up and the ride became brutal. I drafted behind Steve who has an eagle eye for spotting wildlife. He noticed a skunk up on the railroad track, and later an elk, which I missed.
I rode for twenty miles into Haswell. As with all the towns here in the high plains, I could see the grain elevators from about eight miles out. I stopped for Gatorade at a small gas station and ran into westbound TransAm cyclist Tom, who had been at our hotel last night. His blog can be seen here: https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/?o=1mr&doc_id=20790&v=3c
Don drove his Porsche back and forth on highway 96 playing communications runner between us and Eileen, who was without cell phone service and about ten miles out in front. She was headed all the way to Pueblo, a 110 mile trip and her second century in two days. She’s one tough cyclist.
I’ve been passing all these dried out creeks, that flood when the weather turns bad. I noticed a washed out and completely missing bridge on the Missouri Pacific railway line I’ve been paralleling, which confirmed it’s inactivity. The line was originally finished in 1892 to link Kansas with Pueblo.
All the road signs I’ve noticed in Colorado are heavily reinforced to protect them from the wind. My headwind became brutal, and I almost got hit by a tumbleweed. Today I’m listening to wind blowing in my ear, my vibrating fender, and regularly spaced bumps in the road from cracking pavement every 40 feet.
Eight miles out of Sugar City I caught what I believed was my first glimpse of the mountains, far off on the horizon. They were light gray, very small, and distant.
I rode into Sugar City desperately hoping to get a cold Gatorade, but there was no convenient store and the cafe was closed. Sugar city was a huge beat sugar production center in the early 20th century but is now a ghost town. Highway 96 crossed to the north side of the train tracks. This was the first time I had been to the right of them. There was an old Union Pacific caboose parked in the center of town.
It was five more miles to the destination in Ordway. Steve got there ahead of me and scouted out a place to eat. Afterwards we rode over to the sheriff’s office to get a camping permit for the town park. I took a nap on the grass, while Steve worked on his blog. It was extremely windy when I awoke, and storm clouds were in the sky. We’re planning to hide out the storm in a bar, and I’m filing today’s report early.
Awesome im beingba bum today good writng amigo.
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