The Cycling Preacher

July 3

We got up early to begin the ride to Las Vegas, NM from Santa Fe.  I was kind of excited about it because I have never been to Las Vegas before.  Of course, I knew it wouldn’t be anything like Las Vegas, NV, but still.  The ride was uneventful, and we are in a part of the country where photos really don’t do the subject justice.  I think it takes an excellent photographer to capture any part of what it feels like to ride through these wide open spaces where you can see a long ways.

Our ride was 69 miles for the day.  When we arrived in Las Vegas, we were staying in Connor Hall.  I was expecting to sleep on a rec room floor, but we each got our own room in a residence hall, and we had the use of a very small kitchen area (basically frig and microwave) in another building.  Getting our own rooms with beds felt like a great luxury!  In the morning, though, several people mentioned that it felt kind of weird to sleep alone.  It’s strange what we become accustomed to over the course of a month.  I kind of missed having everyone near, also.  It reminds me that over the millennia, humans have more often lived in groups of twenty to thirty, than in the small nuclear families or even single person dwellings that are common in the US now.  It makes me wonder if living in such isolation is a good thing or a bad thing.

July 1 & 2.

Don’t forget!  You can still donate to the Fuller Center for Housing!

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The day started today with a beautiful ride along the Rio Grande canyon road.  I went about 23 miles and decided I was totally pooped.  It felt like something was wrong with me.  Whether the altitude, the accumulated mileage over the week, or the staying up for the campfire—I was just worn out.  So when I got to the first rest stop, I asked for a ride.  Phil took me to the second rest stop where I could get on the van.  We followed the set route and it was also a lovely ride, but the head winds were horrible.  Quite a few people gave up before the end of the day, and the rest were exhausted.  We were welcomed to Christ Lutheran Church in Santa Fe where we are housed, and another Lutheran church is bringing over our meals.

 

On Sunday, I was able to go to one service at each of the churches and then go sightseeing in Santa Fe, followed by all the writing that you have just finished reading.

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.

June 24.

On Saturday we got to participate in our first build day with a local Fuller Center group.  There are around 20 of us and we were split up and sent to different work sites.  We also had a few extra people who came to see their relatives on the ride and to help with building projects.  I saw an application for the work at the local church where we are staying.  Materials were provided and we mainly provided labor—both skilled and unskilled.

I got to work on a log home outside of town belonging to Miss Scottie, an 85 year old woman who said that she had broken every bone below her waist at some point.  She worked along with us and wore herself out, and she was a delightful person.  She had a lunch prepared for us—salad, bread and poor man’s beef stroganoff (which was really made with elk meat.) We coated her house with linseed oil.  She said that she asked the forest service about how to maintain those log buildings and they said linseed oil mixed with paint thinner to help it dry.  She didn’t care if it dried, so she skipped the paint thinner.  The drips of linseed oil had run down over time and made little icicles on the house.  She was delighted and told us so over and over.  She also said her children would be delighted that she didn’t have to climb any ladders.

We oiled her house, moved about a cord of wood from a wood pile to the shed where Scottie stacked it herself (no one else could do it properly), did some mowing and weed-eating, and dug a post hole.  Then she remembered two plants that needed transplanting which were too heavy for her to lift, or hard to get to, so we helped with that also.

Our group got lucky, I think, to work with someone who was so delighted to have our help, and so willing to work along with us even though she was clearly disabled.  She was totally worn out by the time we left, as we also were, but she still insisted on getting back up to give us all hugs and wave goodbye from her front porch.

June 23.

This ride started with a long, relatively flat ride, but there was plenty of climbing and rolling hills in store.  The flat ride was made tougher by a head wind part of the way.  I was really proud of myself, because I was able to mostly keep up during that first part of the ride.  I went 18 miles before I lost sight of the person in front of me!  So that was an accomplishment.

Several people had talked about riding the first segment of the ride and then taking the van to the third rest stop of the day, after the very long, big climb.  I decided to do the same, but then it turned out they changed their minds.  They had gotten help during the windy section of the ride and weren’t as worn out, so they went instead to the second rest stop and got out.  I decided to stick with the first plan.

The third rest stop was at the General Store in Maybelle, Colorado.  Mary, who ran the general store was really a nice person.  We set up all the refreshments on a picnic table under a carport like shelter.  They had bumper stickers in the store saying “Where the hell is Maybelle, Colorado?”  I found out later that it’s also the name of a motorcycle ride.  At Maybelle, I rejoined with the group that had ridden with us to rest stop two.  They had learned to draft each other.  I managed to keep up for about five miles, but then I lost them.

We got a really big welcome in Craig, and we will be here for two days and three nights.  We arrived on Friday and the local Fuller Center Covenant Partner had arranged a picnic in the park for us.  Members of the local Fuller Center board were there, and they also invited a county commissioner and the mayor to the dinner.  The commissioner and mayor were invited to speak and they talked about what an impact we cyclists have had on the town over the years.  We nearly always stop here on the cross country ride because this is the chapter of the Fuller Center furthest to the west in the country (I think).  We also got to hear their history.

This local chapter started out as a chapter of Habitat for Humanity.  About the same time that Habitat for Humanity fired their founders, Millard and Linda Fuller, they also changed the rules for the local chapters.  This local chapter in Moffatt County, Colorado was going to be discontinued because the population of the area was too small.  The only option they were given was to join up with the Steam Boat Springs Habitat for Humanity chapter, about 40 miles away.  So in 2005, they opted out of Habitat for Humanity and became a Fuller Center Covenant partner.  So far they have built two houses which are now producing income through no-interest, no-profit mortgages and have a third in progress.  They have done several Greater Blessings projects, basically home repair help which helps people stay in their homes.

In the park, I got several photos of wood carvings.  Years ago, many of the trees started dying and the then mayor decided that they would contact chain saw carvers from all over and have a contest.  The contest still goes on every year over Father’s Day weekend, but now they have had to move the contest to a larger park on the edge of town.  They also bring in logs to carve and then the carvings are placed around town.  At the beginning of the contest is a drawing to see which log each carver gets.  They have about three days to complete the carving and then the various prizes are decided.  Some of them are really great.

June 22.

We’re visiting our fourth state—California, Nevada, Utah, and now Colorado.  We have seen a lot of different terrain and covered over 1000 miles of the 3600 mile trip.  Hard to imagine!

The road from Roosevelt to Dinosaur was pretty nice—hot, but a nice ride.  We are mainly on Hwy 40, except for a little bypass to skip going through Vernal, Utah.  I actually missed the turn and ended up in Vernal, but I missed the pink dinosaur that is, apparently, the town mascot.  The terrain in Eastern Utah and Western Colorado is desert and canyons and river valleys.  There isn’t much growing except where it is irrigated.  You can get some pretty good pictures of rocky buttes or mesas, and of sedimentary rock.

I was starving by the time I got to Dinosaur.  Apparently we have a new policy that we only have sandwiches at rest stops on century days (strictly speaking, days of 100 miles or more).  Light snacks won’t do it for me, even on a 60 mile ride day.  I had some beef jerky with me, but tried to go on without it.  It didn’t work well.  I finally had to stop and eat some protein.  When I got to Dinosaur, people were asking me if I needed a cold drink, and I gobbled up a turkey and cheese sandwich.  I felt much better after eating that sandwich.

After arriving in Dinosaur and being welcomed into the only church remaining in town, several of us (14 people in a 12 passenger van) took a field trip to Dinosaur National Monument back in Jensen, Utah.  We arrived just in time to catch a shuttle to the area where dinosaur bones were first discovered by a paleontologist in 1909.  They’ve built a building around the quarry wall, have models of some of the things that have been found in the region, and even allow you to touch some of the dinosaur bones.  It was pretty cool.  We got back to the church where we had a great dinner of spaghetti, bread, salad, and brownies.  Everything tastes better when you’re really hungry!

Pics from the Dinosaur National Monument:

June 20 and 21.

The ride from Salt Lake City to Heber City, Utah started out with two long climbs and then a beautiful ride along a bike trail that went past Park City, where the 2002 Winter Olympics were held.  This was no rail-trail.  Rail trails typically have no greater than 3% grade except where they intersect roadways.  This went up and down quite a bit.  It was a lot of fun.  The morning climbs, though, had worn me out.  We went up for eleven miles straight, then a downhill run followed by more climbing—about five miles along the interstate again.  (We were told that going into Salt Lake City was our last interstate stretch, but that was an error)  As the day wore on, it also got hotter.  Reaching the rest stop at 30 miles out, I decided to call it a day.  This turned out to be a smart move.  After reaching our destination, people kept asking me if I was doing OK—so I must have looked terrible!  I felt a little better after a shower and some ice cream, but still totally wiped out.

I have had heat exhaustion/sun stroke before, to the point that I couldn’t even take a sip of water or Coke without throwing up, and went to the emergency room to get an IV.  I wasn’t there this time, but I think I was close to entering the danger zone.  I’m glad I am not trying this without a support vehicle!  Anyway, the time that I got the hospital visit heat exhaustion, it took me a day and a half to recover, so I decided to ride along with some of our support people on the 21st, the trip from Heber City, UT to Roosevelt, UT.  We got up at 5 and started out a little before 7 when it was still cool.  Now, instead of Interstate 80, the ride is mostly along Hwy 40.  I am not sure which is better, to tell the truth.  I was tired of interstate riding, but Hwy 40 still looks very busy, and has two way traffic to contend with.  I will be glad to reach the more populous states with paved rural roads, I think.

I didn’t think to take as many pictures as I should have, but the change in terrain in that 100 miles is just astounding.  We stayed at Mountain View Fellowship in Heber City, a very aptly named Church which does, indeed, have a beautiful mountain view.  We passed through a wooded area going up a mountain to Daniels Pass (8020 ft).  Coming down the mountain we saw a reservoir and the Strawberry River valley.  Shortly after that, we were in mountain desert terrain once again.  I think, from what I learned in school long ago, that the rain clouds typically drop their moisture on one side of the mountains while the other side doesn’t get much, depending on which way the wind blows way up in the sky.  But a real meteorologist could give a more detailed explanation, I’m sure.

At Starvation Lake, we had gone about 65 miles and had seen all kinds of terrain since morning.  It’s really pretty amazing.  The view from the Starvation Lake rest stop was pretty—a lake in the middle of the dry hills.  We also saw a boat with water skiers behind.  Riding into Roosevelt are huge boulders right behind the buildings along the highway.  We also saw a sign advertising a hospital—Don’t let joint problems prevent you from enjoying life!  The picture was of two people riding bicycles.  I find this interesting, because we have a couple of people on the ride who have had joint replacements.  I didn’t know it was possible to do a bike trip like this after joint replacement, but apparently it is.

Tonight we are sleeping in a high school gym in Roosevelt, Utah.  Tomorrow we travel 61 miles to Dinosaur, Colorado.  And it’s going to be hot again tomorrow.