Post 19, Wednesday 6 July, from Pueblo, Colorado

Hi all

A rest day today, in Pueblo, which with a population of 19,000 is the largest place I have been in since Owensboro way back in Kentucky, and a huge culture shock after the tiny places, whose population is measured in the hundreds, I have been staying in across Kansas and eastern Colorado.  (The reason for another rest day, only four days after my last one, is that there are great bike shops here, and I need to get mine checked over and have a new chain and rear wheel sprocket, ready for the mountains ahead.)

Pueblo is also a gateway to the Rockies.  It certainly seemed strange to see encounter some slight hills yesterday, for the first time (if you exclude the slight depressions and elevations across the prairies) since my last day in Missouri on 22 June, 12 riding days and 600 miles ago!

Another change has been to hear and see freight trains again.  Although my route across W Kansas and E Colorado for the last few days has followed a railroad (mostly about 25 yards away!) its use, for carrying grain, seems to be only sporadic.  But yesterday that line joined one which tracks from the coalmines of Wyoming down to Texas, and in just an hour or two I saw three trains.  I loved hearing that whistle again!  There are no passenger services on this line though.....

The day before yesterday, from Eads to Ordway was the most empty and desolate yet.  The emptiness was majestic.  The land was I guess too arid and infertile for agriculture, so the vegetation was dry and short prairie grass, effectively semi-desert. 

Tough country for cattle

There were a very few cattle dotted across the empty landscape (one lady I talked to yesterday, who with her husband runs what she called a 'small' ranch of 2200 acres, told me it takes three acres to support a cow and its calf; I wonder what the average ratio is in Britain?).  But I also saw some deer (bounding so gracefully across the road jsut ahead of me) and antelope (much smaller) - so in the vast flat expanse of nothingness I could almost fancy I was in the Serengeti in Tanzania.

To give a sense of the emptiness, the route from Eads (population 750) to Ordway took me through Haswell (pop 84), then Sugar City (pop 279), a distance of 50 miles.  And in all that distance there was no sign, either on my map or on the horizon, of any habitation either north or south for perhaps 40 or 50 miles.  I wonder what the population density figures are?

So you can understand why I felt very small, very insignificant, and a little vulnerable.  (That sense was deepened because that day was 4th of July, and there were very few cars or trucks on the road - perhaps one every two miles in either direction!) 

It was reassuring that there were other cyclists on the same route going the same way.  I have been linking in with a supported Adventure Cycling group, with 8 riders and two leaders, and also two other (independent) westbound TransAm cyclists called Sandy and Leo (from Pennsylvania).  We have eaten together during the evenings, and it has been good to have company and also to know that should anything untoward happen to me, there were others around and the AC support vehicle if things got really bad.  I was sad to say goodbye to the AC group on Monday evening, and to Sandy and Leo yesterday.

Adventure Cycling group after 4th July dinner

 I have to make a special mention of one of the group - Candy from Vancouver, Canada.  I am guessing that her age is over 70, but she is a real inspiration.  She told me that she is a 'hiker' not a 'biker', but a friend of hers, more than ten years ago, had cycled across Canada from ocean to ocean, and she had filed away in her mind an intention to do something like that one day.  This year she couldn't find an organised group cycling across Canada, but she hooked up with Adventure Cycling to go across the States instead, and here she is cycling across the country - claiming not to know on a bike the difference between the 'steering wheel' (sic) and the back wheel!  And last year or the year before she hiked up Kilimanjaro.....  What an incredible lady!

Now my thoughts turn to climbing in the Rockies during the next few days.  Come Sunday I will cross the highest point of my route, the Hoosier Pass at 11,500 feet.  (I am glad that Kansas and eastern Colorado have sloped imperceptibly upwards, so that Pueblo is at neartly 5,000 feet, so I am not starting at sea level!)  Then on Monday I leave the bike for a few days in Breckenridge, and get down to Denver International Airport to meet Julia and Ben.  That will be a great reunion!  After the three of us visit the Rocky Mountain National Park I shall resume the cycling on Friday next week, with them meeting up with me at my stopping points each afternoon, till they have to fly back to England on the 19th.  And by then, all being well, I shall feel that I am getting reasonably close to the West Coast and seeing Janet again, on 12 August!

Empty and wide Colorado horizon

But there are just a few more pedal-turns to make till then, and a few feet of altitude to climb.......

All best wishes to you all, Ken