Aug/090
Day 37 – PUEBBBBBLO (~115 miles)
Usually we try to get some miles under our belt before stopping for breakfast but sometimes there are no breakfast stops within a reasonable distance, so we just have it first thing. Callum ordered breakfast in his usual way:
“Hi there, can I get the 2 eggs and hash browns but instead of hash browns can I get toast?”
The waitress usually relents because of the Reidy charm.
“OK thankyou and can I get two extra orders of toast please?”
Flat roads and big skies on the Colorado Plains
Don’t worry grandma’s – there were no cars for miles around
On the ride we passed the Arkansas State Penitentiary, so we stopped to take a picture of Dowds, his chav tattoo, and the place he would be living if he had been born in the USA:
Today’s ride was quite hot. There was one point where a headwind came out of nowhere which felt exactly like sticking your head above an open oven-door. It only lasted a few seconds, but it was HOT. Dowds figured out that he drunk 8 litres of water and only…visited the bathroom/peed on the side of the road…once.
We weren’t sure where we would stop today, a headwind or a tailwind can completely change your plans, but we ended up having some reasonable winds, so we headed to Pueblo. As we headed out on the last stretch from the last service stop to Pueblo, a ridiculous side-wind started to pick up. I found it quite funny but there were some scary moments. One thing we’ve noticed is that to the unprepared British eye, every type of weather over here seems like it could be a tornado – but the photo below looks a bit…tornado-ish doesn’t it?
It wasn’t, and the weather wasn’t too bad, but when we arrived in Pueblo we were told that a week or so ago they had a hailstorm with hailstones the size of golf balls, breaking car windows and concussing bears.
Dowds got a puncture on the road into Pueblo so while I wore the high-vis jacket and hurled abuse, Cal headed off to find a motel for the night. Dowds swapped his inner tube out for one which had a dodgy valve so we had no idea if it would hold up for the 3 miles or so to Pueblo. We met back up with Callum, who hadn’t found anything yet, and as we got closer to the centre, Dowds had to keep re-inflating his tyre so often that he told us to go ahead while he walked it to the bike shop. Me and Cal spread out to find the cheapest motel and Cal found one for $39 inc. tax. Bargain. I was a bit apprehensive at first because while Cal was booking the room I saw a shirtless guy with a massive tattoo of a naked lady all the way up his back and a 70-year old jibbering incomprehensible man attempted to talk to me – I did the old smile ‘n’ nod. It turned out to be an awesome place. Quite a few of the people we met lived in the motel; they were all really nice, and helped us find a good all-you-can-eat buffet a couple of miles north of our motel. It was bloody fantastic.
Dowds finds the Yellow Pages that Callum helpfully placed in his pannier a few days back