I took in the fireworks in Breckenridge, and started today with some caffeine, sunscreen, and the usual violence at Cafe Steam & Cream in Fairplay, where yesterday's ride ended. Lauren, foolishly, decided that she wanted to do as much of the ride as she could. She chose the wrong day...
We tore out of Fairplay with what might have been a slight tailwind. During the first hour, we covered 24.5 miles. That's 24.5 mph, that's fast. (faster in kilometers at 39.4 kph).
Today's elevation profile had me excited. We started in Fairplay, at almost 10,000 feet and planned to end in Pueblo at 4600-something feet. That would be a lot of elevation loss, and the map made it look like it was mostly downhill all day. That was a lie. There were some long climbs that really hurt. That, and there some... um, booby traps. I'm pretty sure they were placed by one of the coyotes we saw hunting the road runners we did not see.
We flew along the roads, up the climbs and screamed down the descents. The more altitude we lost, the warmer it got. Soon, we were out of water and in the middle of nowhere.... With a real estate office... and Guffy... a mile UP the road. Guffy was not an option, that was uphill. We found a spicket outside the closed real estate office with the large welcome sign. So we filled up our water bottles and checked each of the four maps. They were large, one of them covered roughly half of Colorado. But all of the maps ended about 3 miles south of Guffy. We had clearly come to Guffy at the end of the World, and we just wanted to know how far to the next town.
Maps or not, we pushed on to Cañon City, our lunch stop. We decided to forgo our usual lunch for something a bit better. And, yes, that is gluten free pizza. I think we shocked our waitress a bit with our good looks and by finishing the family size salad, pizza, and three pitchers of water.
We launched ourselves back into what was now truly desert and passed four different prisons and through 90+ degree strength sapping heat. The water disappeared quickly. We got into Wettemore looking for water. No water in Wettemore. I was not amused by the irony, I was worried. There were no more towns or water fountains for 30 miles. Lauren grabbed some water bottles and walked across the street. She said a quick prayer that she would find a hose, and found a church with a spicket. Prayer answered. We sat and drank a bottle of water.
Then a woman let us into the Wettemore community center and Library and we scored some water and ice and set out for Pueblo. Mostly downhill with no towns... or water... until Pueblo... 30 miles away. Oh, and there was a head wind. For about 80 miles. It was a painful day, but that Gatorade and ice cream bar from the drug store hit the spot. We rolled downhill riverwalk and called it a day with a burger (no bun). After 127 miles, it was nice to be off the bike seat.
No comments:
Post a Comment