Arrival in Denver

Sorry it's been so long since the last post...we've had an extremely tough stretch on the road and I've been too tired (read: lazy) to put anything new up.

After leaving the Cushman ranch, we racked over the Tetons into Jackson, WY to start our stretch of centuries. This is why we racked over them:

An extremely high grade and no shoulder made the Tetons just a tad too dangerous to bike over.  We did have a string of bad luck afterwards also - a stomach virus made its way through the team and we had a crash, but everybody is pretty much back to normal.  I was one of the lucky 5 people on the team who did not get sick and managed to bike every ride.  Oh yeah, and we got to see some wildlife!

On the last century day (from Casper to Wheatland) we got caught in a couple of crazy storms.  At one point, this is what we were outrunning:

We could see individual streaks of lightning a couple miles away from us.  It was a little disconcerting, but pretty cool at the same time.  We were all happy to finally make it to Colorado (our 5th state), despite Wyoming's best attempt to hold us in.  When biking from Wheatland to Cheyenne, we experienced constant headwinds of 15-20 mph with gusts of 30 mph...try biking in that for 5 hours and tell me you aren't frustrated.  We averaged about 6-8 mph the whole day, making it a miserable day.

The day after the obnoxious headwinds proved to be the polar opposite - it was one of the prettiest rides we have done so far (not to mention the team hauled tail).  We ate lunch in Fort Collins, CO (our first stop in the state) at Raising Cane's, the first restaurant we've been to that had respectable sweet tea.  After leaving Fort Collins (home of the Colorado State Rams) we headed to Boulder, home of the Colorado Buffaloes.  We spent the 4th of July watching fireworks on a rooftop.

Yesterday we had a police escort from Invesco Field (home of the Denver Broncos) to the capitol building in the heart of the city.  We got to meet Chad Coltrane (CEO of Push America) and Bruce Rogers (the rider in 1987 who inspired the beginning of Journey of Hope) and now have some free time to explore the city.  Tomorrow we head to Colorado Springs where we have another day off - I'll post more when there's more to post.  In the meantime, have a good week!

P.S. We met up with North Route in Denver.  That's Chris Anger on the far right, one of my brothers from the Virginia Tech chapter.