Colorado

I slept well last night after the paddle and soak session and was up at six for a big ride to Eads, Colorado.


On 100+ mile days the key seems to be to get some good miles in the bank before lunchtime to setup an easier afternoon when the heat strikes. We grabbed some food at a little cafe 25 miles in them headed to the strange town of Tribune.



Tribune was just west of the timezone change to 'mountain time' where the clocks go back another hour (7 hours behind London). As we came into Tribune, there was an eerie emptiness to the streets which was matched by an unnerving town wide speaker network pumping out 'Tribune Radio' which set a scene strangely like 'The Prisoner' tv show.


We stopped in at the library and caught up on things webwise, chatted to some locals then stocked up at the grocery store before attacking a 58 mile stretch with no services again. The rest of the afternoon was slow, hot and windy and we slugged it through some endless roads with constant tumbleweed attacks at high speed.


A quick stop at a post office in Sheridan Lake got us out of the sun and this was quite a remarkable building. As well as a post office, there were some much needed vending machines and then the surprise of the smallest bowling alley in the US (sadly closed in the afternoon).

We set off for the last 25 miles and got about 10 miles before needing another break from the headwind so we pulled up outside the road to a
big ranch. Chris noticed some thorny type things in his front tire so I checked my front one,, pulled out a little thorn and then swore as there was a steady hiss of air.

I took the tube out, checked the tire, patched the inner tube up and with Chris wrestled the tire back on (schwalbe tires are notoriously tough to get back on). We reinflated the tire only for another bout of hissing :-( It seems there were multiple holes and so we sacked off that tube, thoroughly checked the tire, removing tiny thorns with tweezers, and then put in a spare inner tube and fought again to remount the tire.

With my first puncture in 2000 miles fixed, I put the wheel back on then cursed the world and all the gods as I saw my back tire was now flat too! We got to work on that one and soon had it fixed in spite of the biting wind cutting across us, and began the last few miles to Eads to set up camp.

On entering town we met two other cyclists but these poor/mad souls were riding Penny Farthings!! One was a local enthusiast and the other was a fellow Londoner called Joff. Joff is from Greenwich and is riding around the world in an ad hoc way so not doing a full circumnavigation but was still impressive enough for me. His bike seems pretty robust with tubeless tires and two part spokes and he hopes to be home for Christmas.

He went to his hotel whilst we set up in the rudimentary city park and then we ate two meals each at a pleasant local diner having had no
proper lunch.