Month: July 2017

June 30

We had a big day planned the day that we arrived in Taos.  The ride was 92 miles long and we had to arrive at the Taos Visitor Center in time to load up our bikes to be driven up to a Presbyterian camp, Loma Verde, up on the mountain.  Up there we could take a shower and then be shuttled down without our bikes to Ranchos Presbyterian Church for dinner and a presentation.  Then we were loaded back up to go to the camp.  In addition, there were interesting sights to see on the way.  For the first time, I decided to shuttle ahead.  It made for a very relaxed day because I was ahead of the group most of the day so I didn’t have to worry about slowing anyone else down.

I rode in the car the first 35 miles to the New Mexico line with Becky.  On the way, we saw a sign for the oldest church in Colorado, so we stopped by to see it.  That was an interesting thing, because the church building is not that old.  But if you define church as the body of people who gather in that site, then I think it would qualify as the oldest church.  Obviously it is populated by different people, but still the oldest church.

My ride began at the New Mexico state line, at the second rest stop.  To me, what sounded like the interesting and best rest stops were at the third and especially the fourth stop.  I was one of the first to arrive at rest stop 3 and I had time to go in the restaurant across the street.  They would let us use the bathroom, but requested that if you want to use the rest room, you actually purchase something.  I almost always do that anyway!

When I walked in, I thought I was going to find a store—instead it was a restaurant.  I ordered an ice coffee and was sitting at the counter.  The pies looked home-made, not store bought, so I asked.  They had apple pie, cherry pie, and apple/chile/pinon pie!  So I ordered the apple/chile/pinon pie with ice cream and it was wonderful.  That, plus the sandwich I got from our own crew was a wonderful lunch.  While I was sitting there with Kelley, she ordered the chocolate/red chile cookies.  They just tasted like dark chocolate until the very end when you could taste the bite of the chile.

 

From there, I rode to the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge.  Unlike the Colorado River, which carved out the Grand Canyon, we learned that the gorge was a volcanic rift to which the river found its way.  Then we rode into Taos—quite a bit of the way with a headwind.  I am getting tired of headwinds but nonetheless I made it there after my head start.

 

We rode to the Taos Visitor Center where we received a very enthusiastic welcome.  This is, as far as I know, the only place where someone called Fuller Center to volunteer to host our group.  Julie and her husband, Darryl, had taken a group on a mission trip for flood relief in Hammond, LA.  They were going through a Presbyterian Disaster Relief organization, but the building site was administered by the Fuller Center.  When they got back home, Julie researched the Fuller Center, found out about the bike adventure and learned that we were planning to go through Taos.  So she talked her church into hosting us with a meal and opened up the camp for us.  We ate the best beef brisket I think I have ever had!

Then we were shuttled back up to the camp.  It was kind of late and I was pretty tired, but I went out to enjoy the campfire with about eight or ten of my compatriots.

June 28 & 29.

Leadville is beautiful in the morning.  We went along a bike path for just a few miles before starting out on a Colorado highway.  We had 61 miles almost entirely downhill.  Since we were on a state highway, the grade wasn’t too bad.  We could coast at about 20 miles an hour.

This is one of the weeks when I was tired about every night.  We had several long rides and altitude to deal with, and I am having a hard time remembering where we have been and what we have done from day to day.  Salida was a charming little town—it seems to be kind of an arts and tourist community.  There were numerous consignment and arts shops.

Our chore team is on laundry duty this week, so we also got to visit the Salida laundromat!  I worked on getting some of my pictures titled to get ready for publishing my blog later and one of my teammates, Steve, met a backpacker who was doing his laundry at the same time.  We do laundry every three days.  Everyone piles their laundry into two piles—riding clothes and regular stuff.  Everything is mixed together.  We haul about 80 pounds of laundry to the laundromat and hope it’s not busy because we are going to need a ton of machines.  Everyone has to have their clothes marked in some way because we all have matching jerseys and shirts.  And who wants to wear someone else’s underwear?  The laundry gets semi-sorted into the shirt section, pants, riding shorts, jerseys, towels, underwear and socks.  Then we try to rummage through it and find our own stuff.

The next day we had another mountain pass to navigate, Poncha Pass, again at 9000 ft.  I was slow but I made it all the way up.  The grade wasn’t too bad, but it was approximately twelve miles of climbing as soon as we left the church.  The total ride for the day was supposed to be 75 miles.  We had a headwind, but I got help from Macy and Mary who are stronger riders than I am.  They took turns riding in front of me to block the wind so I was able to go quite a bit further than I could have gone on my own.  I was very thankful that they were there with me.

We made it to the last rest stop at Hooper Junction where we met up with Becky and Kian.  They have dual roles—media interns and support.  Becky, though, wasn’t feeling too well.  I think I could have finished the ride with the support I had, but I was also worn out.  Becky gave me an excuse to get off the bike and drive for her to the Presbyterian Church in Alamosa.  One of our riders had brought a car and said that anyone was allowed to drive it.  It was strange to drive a car after a month with no driving!

The Presbyterian Church in Alamosa hosts quite a few work groups, so they have taken some of their unused rooms and installed bunk beds and they installed a shower in the men’s room and another in the women’s room.  We always like it when we can shower without traveling, especially if the shower is warm!  Sometimes it’s just one shower or bathroom for our entire group and that can be a bit of a challenge, but we adjust.

June 27.

Leadville, elevation 10,000 ft, is the highest incorporated city in the United States, and that is where we were scheduled to stay the night.  But first we had to get there!  We got to ride through Silverthorne, where our interns had picked up the starter the night before.

We started out riding along a road that looked like walls of coal on both sides toward the mountains.  One of the main highlights of the day for me was a bike path through Silverthorne that ran alongside the Blue River.  It was truly delightful!  But after going along the river, we had to climb up the side of a huge dam!  That was the highlight of my trip so far, I believe.  The bicycle path had a little sign on it to indicate that it was steep, and you could see all the switchbacks.  We were also already at 9000 ft of elevation!  And I made it all the way up the path to the top of the dam.

After reaching the top, the wind hit me.  But I kept going because the rest stop was still about two miles away.  When I got to the rest stop, I stood there for a second and then exclaimed, “I am seriously amazing!”  Shortly after that I started to cry because I was so proud of myself.  People kept asking, “Are those happy tears, Ruth?”  I could only nod my head, I couldn’t speak.  I could not have done that climb three weeks early when we started that trip, especially at altitude.

Since we had a lot of climbing that day and a lot of altitude gain, we had the option of skipping a portion of the ride by shuttling ahead.  So I was planning to shuttle ahead to rest stop 3 and continue the ride from there.  Arriving at rest stop 3, it was very windy, and another person told me that the cross winds and head winds were terrible.  So I decided to stay in the van for the ride into Leadville.  We crossed over Fremont Pass at 11,000 ft, but Grace wasn’t willing to let us take our bikes off the rack to fake pictures!  We arrived at the First Baptist Church at Leadville and some of us went to get delicious hamburgers.

A couple of people got altitude sickness on the way into Leadville.  So that was a difficult day, even though very beautiful.