Day 49, Pueblo, CO

Miles – 0

Miles From Start/To Finish – 2,115/2,113~

Ave Riding Speed – 0 mph

Hours Start to Finish – 0

Weather – Cloudy/Smokey Haze and 93

I would have liked to have slept in this morning, but my biological clock said to get up at 6:30am. Kim heard me moving about our Hampton Inn hotel room, so we walked down to the hotel breakfast nook for eggs, bacon, potatoes, oatmeal, yogurt, apple juice and coffee. There weren’t many guests having breakfast this early, but I noticed a couple families with young kids bouncing around the room.  All that energy. It was awesome and those moments reminded me of my kids when they were little and my grandkids today.

After breakfast we tidied up our hotel room and got ready for our zoom taped podcast called Living In Carver County, hosted by Greg Andersen. We’ve lived in the communities of Chaska, Chanhassen and Carver, in Carver County, for 28 years and raised our 3 children there. At 9am we recorded the episode that lasted about an hour. Greg said he doesn’t edit it and it should be available in a day or 2.  I’ll post a link on our blog or Greg said it should be available on most podcast services.

Most of the day was spent vegging out, doing laundry, eating and watching movies on cable. We reviewed our maps for the next couple day and discussing the plan.  Tomorrow it’s 50 miles to Ordway where we could probably find a motel room. After that it looks like it’s camping for the next 100 miles. Our maps no longer have the elevation views so we’re not sure what the humps along the way will look like or if we continue to descend and could carry more miles. It would be great to make it to Eads, CO, the official halfway point of the ride, so we’re going to be flexible with tomorrows end point. Eads is about 115 miles from Pueblo.

As we’ve been tooling down the highway during this adventure, I’ve been thinking about some of the poor decisions I’ve made in my life or the bad things have happened, for no apparent reason, like Kim’s cancer. Sometimes life just happens and we need to find a way to move forward. Kim and I have both gone through some tough times, some self-inflicted or some, I believe, just because God thought we needed to change our view and could handle it. But in the end, we’ve always gone through them together. And we’ve had unlimited support from those around us.

I also believe the true measure of a person’s character is not how they fall down, but how they get up. By any person’s yardstick I hope we’ve done a good job of being a good example for our children, our families, our friends and our community. I also hope that people are finding some inspiration in our adventure to live life to its fullest potential, as we all get one trip around this earthly block.

I updated my LinkedIn profile today. I’m officially an Adventure Cyclist and Fundraiser with Motch Across America.

Kim and I spoke to our parents today. It’s always great to touch base with our biggest cheerleaders, leading supporters and get a boast of confidence from mom and dad, to get us through the week.

There is flash flood warning in the counties just west of us today, but we’re hoping things clear up by the morning.

We ordered in salads from Applebee’s for dinner and we’re going to continue laying around the hotel room for the evening doing as little as possible.

The grasshopper picture is from yesterdays ride when they were covering the road. They’re huge!