July 4th Sargents, CO

We stayed in this little cabin in Sargents and had dinner in the restaurant there. The boys called it the fried meal because they were only serving fried things. The grill and oven were closed...only the fryer was still going. Yonah had deep fried mushrooms and mozzerella sticks, Solomon and I had fried chicken (Gracias Gallina), and Matt had Beer Battered Fish and Chips. We all felt sort of sick afterwards but I have learned to keep my mouth shut after the Gravy incident in Stoner. We had stopped in Stoner (with all the hummingbirds) for Brunch on Sunday and I had an omellete, fruit, and a biscuit. But when it came out there was a little metal cup on my plate with something sort of white and congealed looking. I had no idea what it was but I didn't want to be insulting or sound like some liberal Bay Area intellectual by asking if the Aioli was for the eggs...so I said, as sweetly as I could, "Wow...this all looks great! What is THIS extra treat you have given me?" (pointing at the metal cup). Well, would have thought I'd asked her if this was the fried placenta I'd ordered.....she gave me an incredulous look, and said in a slightly louder voice "THAT'S GRAVY!!!! If you don't want it I can take it off the plate". Yikes. I thought gravy was BROWN!!! In all the cartoons I ever read it was brown and runny...not white and mucilagenous.
After dinner we all took the longest, hottest showers of our lives...all the shower you can eat, in Sargent!! Then we saw some fireworks that were put on, almost in front of our cabin, by the volunteer fire dept. It consisted of two fire engines and 6 guys who seemed to be in hog heaven with all the pirotechnics suddenly at their disposal. It was actually a great show for a little town of about 15 people.
Most of the evening though, was spent washing out the waterbottles (with brush and very dilute bleach solution...a nightly chore), rinsing out clothes so they would dry by the next day (socks, bike shorts, shirts..also a nightly chore), and checking all the tires for exposed threads, flats...lubing the chains, fixing tubes, charging up ipods and phone..camera batteries, etc. (also a nightly chore). We didn't want to get to bed too late because the next day we were going to be doing our big and dreaded climb over Monarch Pass....11,312 ft.
Matt is going to write about that tomorrow. I'll just say that it wasn't as difficult as I was led to believe..not nearly as hard as some of the stuff we climbed in Utah..and it was sooooo beautiful and the weather was perfect...and we mostly had a tail wind. These last few days have been so beautiful. These were the kind of days I imagined when I thought about what this trip would be like...so scenic..the weather so beautiful..the flowers so abundant and vibrant..everything smelling like Febreeze....the wind at our backs and just cool enough to be comfortable...It is days like this that I feel a slight pang of guilt at being gone from work for so long. When I was dying in Nevada and Utah...passing cows that had perished in the desert..I didn't feel the least bit guilty, but now......
anyhow, we crossed the continental divide and conquered Monarch Pass. It was a beautiful day, about 74 degrees. Blue sky, white grape cluster clouds...not much traffic but what there was, was typical of Colorado...shitty drivers. I'm going to make a generalization here based on my subjective observations: the bigger the American flag sticker on the car, the more discourteous the driver. If, in addition to the flag, they also have one or more of those jingoistic red/white/blue ribbon magnets...well you may as well just pull over or risk getting yelled at, sworn at, honked at, or sideswiped. In general the drivers in Colorado are much nastier and dangerous than in any of the three previous states. I was talking to a guy on the top of Monarch Pass, who is riding from Virginia to SF and he said that was true coming the other way as well, Colorado was the worst so far for him too. Here is one last generalization; men over 40 who are biking across country by themselves tend to be sort of eccentric and weird. But, the same is not true for men under 40 who are biking alone...they tend to be very cute, and exceptionally cool and interesting. So far I only have an "N" of 4 but I'll keep you updated as my statistical power increases. Heidi, you have really got to get out on your bike.