Eads Pretty Flat Around Here – Day 26

Date: Wednesday 1^st September   

Route: Pueblo, Colorado – Eads, Colorado  

Distance: 124 miles   

Total climb: 1468ft

Net climb: -737ft

We were off to an early start as Team Heagney had to drive over 600 miles in the day to return the RV.  We said our goodbyes and headed off through the Pueblo State Park which is as impressive in the daylight as it is labyrinthine in the dark.  We cycled past the marina and dam and back on the main road into Pueblo.  The road was less scary in the daylight and minus the snakes of the evening before.  The route took us into downtown Pueblo and, knowing that there were not many bike shops over the next few hundred miles, we tried to hunt down one of the three in Pueblo.  We missed on our first pass, but after retracing our steps we found the Great Divide Bike Shop.  The shop wasn’t open when we arrived so I headed off to Walgreens to stock up on sun-cream while Fred waited at the shop.  My route involved a surprisingly perilous climb over a one lane bridge and being sworn at by an ageing biker on his ridiculous Harley.  Mental note, buying a motorbike will not recapture my youth.

I returned to the bike shop to find that Fred’s bike had been serviced (new chain) and that mine could be looked at straight away.  A new chain, brake blocks and some minor adjustments later and we were ready to go; it was 10:45 and we still had over 100 miles to go.

Our first few miles were marred by Greta getting confused by the fact that we had doubled back on ourselves to find the bike shop.  After she had sorted herself out though we made swift progress to the town of Boone.  In the process of trying to find a convenience store I inadvertently stumbled into a community food hand out, where people had brought food in order to give to the poor among the local community.  The ladies running the event were very friendly and pointed us in the direction of the community store which was a few hundred metres back up the road.  We bought some provisions and had a quick picnic on the town’s small green.  Again, the man running the store went out of his way to be helpful and gave us a copy of the Prairie Horizons Trail map, which is a combined effort between all of the communities along the stretch of the route that passes through Eastern Colorado to improve the experience of TransAmerica cyclists in their neck of the woods.  The very existence of this map made me feel welcome throughout this stage of the route, which has been one of my favourite parts of the ride.  The friendliness of the people of Boone also left me with a real affection for the town.

After leaving Boone we headed out into the midst of the Great Plains.  We cycled along SR96 with railway tracks by our side, both of which will be our constant companions for the next few hundred miles.  As the name would suggest the Plains are wide and very flat and in the absence of any wind we made rapid progress through Olney Springs and Crawley before stopping for lunch at Martins on Main Street in Ordway.  It was a relief just to get out of the heat, and when combined with good burgers and excellent banter from the owner of the establishment (as well as writing in the cyclists log) it made for the perfect break.

Our afternoon was made up of more racing along in the heat and trying to get to our target destination of Eads.  As we were moving east (and before we moved into a new time zone) we knew that the sun would be setting early and so we took one final proper break in the afternoon, as twilight was beginning to set in, at Arlington.  Arlington is a town of three houses which is famous on the route solely for the Arlington Comfort Stop – essentially a wooden portaloo decorated with flowers and containing a visitors book.  After paying a mandatory visit to the convenience we were back on our bikes and riding into the night.  We did stop once more at the garage in Haswell, it was closed but there was mobile phone reception which allowed me to call ahead and book a motel room for the evening in Eads.

Knowing that we now had somewhere to sleep was a big boost as we cycled the final fifteen miles of the ride in pitch darkness.  It was not our first experience of night cycling, however this time the experience was rather different.   First, the road was not in great condition and so we needed to be particularly watchful for any holes in the road that might damage the wheels.  Second, the flatness of the roads plays tricks with your perception in the dark – with town lights in the distance and cars coming over the horizon it gives the feeling that you are cycling continually upwards – even though that isn’t the case.  It’s an odd feeling.

Nonetheless, we eventually made it to Eads at around 9:45 and checked into the motel.  We were met by a man holding what we initially thought was a machine gun, but was, in fact, a nail gun and a girl who could have been no more than 15 holding a baby.  Eads seemed like a strange town.  I had managed to scavenge some food from the gas station and we settled back in the hotel room – back in full sized beds for the first time in two weeks.  It had been a long, tough, day but we had managed to get back into the routine of being unsupported and got a lot of miles under our belts.

The points after…

–           For large sections of our ride today we were travelling alongside what appear to be miles of abandoned railway carriages.  We speculated as to whether the railway company (Union Pacific) knew that they were there.

–           A massive thank you to Team Heagney for all of their efforts, without their help we would simply not have made it this far by now.

JBS