Since we’re about two weeks behind on our blogs and there’s hopefully going to be several days’ worth of blogs for you to get caught up on reading, I’ll keep this one short. Also, since we’re so far behind, my memory isn’t quite good enough to write a detailed blog about a bike ride that happened two weeks ago. Even more importantly, several members of the team have reminded me more than a few times that it’s my turn to post, so writing it short and quick should appease their demands.
With all those excuses out of the way, here’s what went down on our second century ride of the trip. With mileage and temperatures in the 100's ahead of us, we woke up early at the KOA in Limon and did everything we could to get on the road early. One of the things I did to speed up my morning routine was to skip putting on sunscreen. In hindsight, maybe that wasn’t the best idea. I started to feel a little toasty about halfway through the morning, so I figured I’d just rub some on at lunch.
Caralyn, Leah, Maile and I biked together and met Erin, who was driving that morning, for lunch at another KOA along the way. Since we had stayed at a KOA the night before and there was a covered picnic area that wasn’t being used at the moment near the entrance to the campground, we figured it would be okay if we stopped for a short lunch in the shade. About halfway through our lunch, the campground manager came over and reminded us that we were, in fact, eating on private property without permission, so we scarfed down our meals, apologized, and hit the road as fast as possible. While scrambling to leave the campground, I forgot once again to put on sunscreen.
Our hosts for the night were Rob (a friend of Maile’s dad), and his wife Ann. After biking 104 miles, we finally made it to the house, but we soon realized that we had been using the wrong address. Our interaction with the homeowner went something like this:
“Hi, how are you all doing?”
“Fantastic! Are you Ann?”
“…Yes.” (Her name was actually Ann!)
Ann starts to slowly shut her door.
“Thanks for letting us stay with you!”
Ann swings the door open again.
“Oh no, I think you have the wrong house.”
“Oh. Sorry about that.”
We then sat on the sidewalk and stared at the grass for a few minutes. After some detective work, we figured out what the right address was and realized we had biked past it 10 miles ago. We were already exhausted, and I didn’t want to get any more sunburned than I already was, so we decided to wait for the car instead of biking another 10 miles. In the meantime, we relaxed at a coffee shop nearby. It isn’t everyday that you get to visit a fancy hipster Colorado coffee shop, so I ordered the trendiest thing I could find on the menu: kombucha with a shot of espresso.
Once we made it to our hosts, we were greeted with burgers fresh off the grill, and we enjoyed listening to stories about Rob’s time at Caltech even if they are technically our rivals. The food and conversations were so good, I almost forgot how sunburned I was.