Awesome.

The Arkansas

Deer

The past two days have been gorgeous, though we've just been in the foothills. Yesterday, we took a 57ish mile ride into Pueblo, which is a pretty awesome city. As a city, it has its slums as well as its fancy neighborhoods, but for a town with a population smaller than Huntsville, there were a ton of bike shops, good places to eat, huge city park/zoo, etc. We stopped by the bike shop to get my handlebars re-taped (and man are they comfy now), brakes checked out (they're good for now), and derailleurs readjusted (apparently my shifter is screwed up). The guys there (intersection of Santa Fe and 4th for anybody interested) were super nice and super awesome. They they suggested another super place for lunch right down the street - Taqueria Delicious or something like that. This place had ginormous burritos (and other stuff) for under $4, and for those of you looking for a refreshing beverage, they had this mango water stuff that was wonderful. The ingredients are (easily enough) mango and water. I'm not sure how they make it, but there were tiny bits of mango left in the stuff, and it was really sweet. They had to have some great mangos. The people were really friendly too, which is always a nice thing. After leaving Ordway (which has a cool fountain/sprinkler thing in its city park), we headed into some pre-foothill hills. And though I don't think I've seen a sand dune before, I'm pretty sure we went through an area with a bunch of scrub-covered dunes. The area was gorgeous semi-dessert, with an installed lake here and there for fishin'. We saw prairie dogs (cool) and a deer or two. Halfway through, we stopped to get a package and something to drink, and I ran straight into my dad's fender stay (think sharp metal rod). Totally impaled my leg (the thing probably went in .5-1cm deep), and my leg swelled up like mad, making the last half kinda painful to pedal. So I just stopped pedalling with my left leg and did the last 20 miles using my clipped-in right leg. Toward the end of the run, we joined US 50 and saw our first running trains since Missouri. It's kinda refreshing to be around mountains and trains again; I really can't explain how much better I feel surrounded by mountains, and these are some kick-ass mountains. Also coming into Pueblo, we passed an exit to Pueblo's Chemical Plant thing (Huntsville people: think Anniston except they have to ship their stuff to Anniston for decomissioning; non-Huntsville people: think chemical weapons). A little disconcerting, but there were still mountains and trains, so I was happy. Temperatures were a lot more comfy, too.
Today, we got up and took 62 miles (50 + riding around town) to get to Canon City (pronounced Canyon), which is right beside the Royal Gorge. The town is pretty touristy (gateway to mountains and a good place for rafting), but nice nonetheless. Today, we hit some larger hills and, at one point, had made 6000+ feet (that climb was a tough one, though the grade still didn't get me in lowest of my gears). We left Pueblo, went through their rather large city park and zoo, and hit our first blip on the altitude map pretty quickly. It was a long hill, but the grade wasn't anything to kick me out of second gear. We continued slowly climbing toward the mountains, with Pike's Peak off to our right and some beautiful country in front of us. It stayed pretty desolate for the first half of the day, and we got to see quite a few more deer. They don't really look like the ones back east, either. Eventually, we started hitting town after town, including one that has a ton of prisons. Colorado has a ton of inmates, and with warnings that if you take a newspaper, you can get a year in prison, I think I may see why. Word has it that they also doubled penalties for felonies sometime. Not the best way to decrease the number of people in penitenteries. The one that we passed outside of Florence, CO is a federal supermax prison that has the who's who of bad guys (shoe bomber, unibomber, oklahoma city bomber, etc) - tis one scary place. It looked like some resort or something aside from the double layer of razor wire and scary signs. When we got to Canon City, we rode around town for a few hours checking out the train that goes through the Royal Gorge and the section of the Arkansas by the train depot (it's the takeout for one of the more intense sections nearby). Tomorrow, we're taking a zero and having an awesome time being tourists. We get to do the dual train/raft thing, and it looks like it will be outstanding. The river is III-IV (V- if you believe the companies), and it's above the recommended flow right now. Sounds intense and exciting to me. After our zero, we have one hell of a climb up to just below the top of Hoosier Pass. We go up a long, steep thing to our first pass at 9000+ and then keep climbing (eventually over Hoosier and down into Breckinridge/Silverthorne). I figure if I can make it through some class V stuff (and I'm claiming that even if AmericanWhitewater says I'm wrong), I'll be ok with the altitude (cause we'll be camping around 10,000 feet and that makes me nervous). Anyhoo. After biking over 2000 miles, I'm not gonna let a little inability to breath stop me :^D