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.