- Team distance: 74.39 mi
- Team elevation: 3,540 ft
- Dedication: Steven and the team
- Van group: Julia and Maggie
- Host: North Fork High School
Today I was in the host van with Julia and Maggie as the team tackled a somewhat unexpectedly tough day. I think a lot of us focused so much on Trail Ridge Road that we forgot we still had mountains to cross after that. Today the team had a 75-mile ride which included crossing McClure Pass. As we were driving up I had to interrupt our conversation to acknowledge how steep the climb was. The van was struggling!
Back to the start of the day: we had a nice breakfast courtesy of Linda and Bill and got the teams on the road. We stopped at a cute coffee shop outside of town for some caffeine and then made our way to the host. On our way we ran into the best thing that’s ever happened to me on van duty: a dog! This huge but adorable dog, who we have come to call Bubba Doug, was trotting along the road and came right over to us when we pulled over. He had a collar but no tag, so we decided to load him in the van and drive him back to the Carbondale fire department. It was quite an effort to get him in the van (Julia showed off her deadlift skills and hauled him up by the rear) and he was extremely large, drooly, and dusty but so so sweet. It really made my day!
On our way back to town we passed a few of the 4K groups, so of course we rolled down the windows and screamed at them to look at our dog. It’s been a running joke to refer to 4K things as “cansa ___”, (e.g., cansa van, cansa bikers) in a bad Jersey (?) accent. Julia took our few seconds of contact with the team to yell “check out our cansa dog!!!”, which we laughed about for the rest of the drive. The fire department called for a police officer who deemed him a repeat offender and carted him off in the back of his cruiser, which we also laughed about for a long long time.
After dropping off Bubba Doug we circled back to cross McClure Pass and go to our host. We are staying at North Fork High School, former school of my teammate Katy! We met up with their custodian to get a tour of the building and drop off all the bags. Since Maggie is still injured Julia and I did most of the unloading– let me just say, we are two strong ladies but some of our teammates’ bags had us swearing under our breath, and by the end we were covered in sweat. Some of us have been vaguely telling the group to send things home that they aren’t using, but today I started calling people out by name for their bag weights.
After that we set out to get lunch. Options were very, very slim as we are in a pretty desolate area of Colorado and it is Sunday so many businesses were closed. We got turned down from a few places in both Hotchkiss and Paonia but did get a $150 gift card donated from a local store called Big B’s. Their main draw is cider but they had some great food, too! We ended up getting $150 worth of chicken tenders and fries for the team and some veggie burgers for our dietary restriction people. We also bought our own personal lunches so we wouldn’t take any food from the team. I think we stopped by Big B’s four separate times by the end of the day. I’m sure their staff was sick of us but they were so helpful!
There was no service for most of the day and the team was going through a lot of water, so around lunchtime we ended up picking up some water van responsibilities so that Tori and Briana could refill our water jugs. We had one of the quickest 4K lunches ever, mostly because there were no pull-off spots with shade and no one wanted to sit in the heat. After lunch the team had a short but hot ride to the host, where Katy’s mom brought us a delicious spaghetti dinner.
After dinner we had a quick team meeting to prepare for more of what the team had today in the next few weeks: extreme heat, no cell signal, and few amenities. Then, after weeks of waiting, we finally voted on our couple for 4K wedding! Maggie put together an awesome powerpoint with all of the nominees’ “engagement photos”, which we took way back in Des Moines. Some couples got really creative with it and it was a really fun time. We had everyone rank their top five couples and I counted up the votes. I’m not telling the team until tomorrow so I’ll save the announcement for tomorrow’s post :)
Until then!
Lauren
Lauren Bikes America 