Aug/090
Day 40 – Odd Day – 66.5 miles
Today we woke up to an awesome view. We hadn’t really appreciated this due to the adverse weather of last night but Chris snapped this pretty awesome photo from out tent site.
The ride started with a pretty tough climb. We knew that the whole day was going to be uphill, we were just praying it wasn’t too steep the whole way! Me and Cal got a bit competitive and decided that we would race up every hill. Chris decided to be a girl and pansy his way up.
We got to Guffey, 22 miles up the hill, where we were to have breakfast. Guffey was a place well known to us before we set off as this town is pretty much owned by one person and the town mayor is a Cat! One of the many strange towns on this route!
We ate breakfast at Lisa’s Cafe. Where we met Ian, a Scot riding from Vancouver, Canada to Boston Massachusetts. Breakfast was good until Callum went to pay and realised he had left his wallet/purse/credit cards/life back at the campsite! He than had to call the campsite who had luckily found it and were more than happy to send it forward to him.
Guffey seemed like a very nice place if a little strange!
The next part of our ride took us into South park – something Chris was getting very excited about. It didn’t stop him climbing like a girl though! On the way we met a lady called Donna Byrne. She was riding her horses around America looking for a job. We stopped firstly because from about 50 yards back Callum thought it was a bear! After filling his pants we rode closer to find Donna and her two horses. She had been on the road since February, riding about 20 miles each day. She had recently run out of money so was eating the horse feed! Our good deed for the day was to donate a few cereal bars and packets of porridge to her. She took a liking to Callum, I think he has found a very special person in Donna. After telling her how awesome she was she told him how gorgeous he was – It was like watching two besotted teenagers!
We ate lunch in Hartsel. After eating me and Callum fell asleep for a good half hour, leaving Chris to pick up the bill! Chris woke us and immediately got us onto the road. After about 2 miles it started raining, Me and Cal stopped to put on some warmer clothes – That was the last we saw of Chris! I guess after fannying his way up all of the steep hills he still had some energy left – Me and Cal didn’t! Into the headwind we were only averaging about 11mph!
We got to Fairplay where we found Chris calling Campgrounds. Not fancying camping in the imminent storm I went to the motels to find a room $100 was the best I found – Looks like camping isn’t so bad after all!
We hid from the storm in a local bar, then got chucked out because we hadn’t bought anything! Went to Pizza hut for dinner and then headed to a “free” campsite near the reservoir.