Day 20 (part 2): Storm before the calm
Saturday, July 22nd. We are in Sargents, CO.
We set sail from Gunnison in the afternoon for the final 30 miles of the ride. The headwind was ridiculous, so the last 10 miles took far too long for our tastes. But when you are going slow it often gives you a time to look around and enjoy the busy Colorado scene. I’ve come to a couple of conclusions…
Also, Coloradans set up stores that sell nonsensical and nondescript items more often than any other race of US states:
We hit up a campsite in Sargents and opted to get a Tepee over the single crab-grass tent site since it was only $5 more. The idea of all six of us sleeping under the same roof is positively electric… tingling even.
Speaking of electric, there is a fantastic thunderstorm taking place here. It’s a bit worrisome since we may be doing one of our most dangerous climbs tomorrow to a peak of 11,400 feet. One of the locals said the pass we’re going through, Monarch Pass, is only open 90 days out of the year and sometimes not even that long. I don’t know if they’re trying to spook us, but I’d prefer not to ride in thunder and rain tomorrow anyhow.
When we first entered the tepee, my first thought was “we’ve made a huge mistake”…
But the concept of sleeping on a cot is particularly attractive at this point, so we were willing to risk getting a tad wet. Especially since David would be directly under the major hole in the roof. He sleeps like a hibernating bear cub.
There was a dog running around like it owned the campsite and we all took turns giving it a petting. It would “talk” to you while you rubbed it. So cute. And smelly. Cute, but mostly smelly. And then it ate up some of our pasta dinner when we weren’t watching…
(I’m going to have dues to pay for that picture.)
It turned out that the dog did own the campsite, so we couldn’t manhandle it too much.
Everyone is pretty quiet this evening. I think we’re all mentally preparing for tomorrow’s major climb. It’s a huge event for us since it’s our last major climb of the west coast. After Monarch Pass, there’s practically nothing for over a thousand miles. (Boring.) I’m preparing to attack it as hard as I possibly can. Hopefully we’ve got a high enough VO2 max to really haul all the way up to 11,400 feet without getting totally winded.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention: the nice people at the campsite let us stay for free since we’re a charity. I think we’ll be playing the charity card more often from now on… that’s $25 more we can spend on cowboy hats and worthless truckstop novelty items.
Wish us luck for tomorrow.
Today’s Numbers:
Miles Cycled: 70
Flat Tire Tally: 14
Separate times we all argued on whether or not to include the dog joke: 5
Frustration level when there is a strong headwind: 8 out of 10
Random Images
