Day 25 -- Fort Morgan, CO

It’s funny how some of the days we expect to be the worst turn out to be the best and vice versa. Breckenridge was supposed to be the hardest day cycling and although it was difficult, it remains one of the best days in the trip so far. Our entry into the American flatlands was supposed to be an easy flat ride of 100 miles out of Denver and became a nightmare. To start off the day, the crew marked a wrong turn and ended up losing half the team in the streets of Denver. After losing an hour, we were back on the road only to stop again after a nail went through my friend Adam Southard’s back tire. Although the day was mostly flat and we averaged 18-20 mph, we ended up stopping another 3 times because of flats. It seems that everyone had flats today. At the end, we counted 20 tubes lost on a single day (we usually end up with 1 flat a day, if that). Some pace-lines had to stop as many as 7 times because of flats. To make it worse, two accidents today caused injuries to cyclists. One ended up falling going 20 mph and has severe road rash on his leg and shoulder (luckily, he didn’t break anything!). Another cyclist was involved in a collision due to a short stop in city traffic and hit his private parts on the top tube pretty hard to the point where he racked himself for the day because of swelling. There was farmland surrounding us for most of the day, so the sights weren’t incredible. Not to mention the effect all of these events had on the mood of the team (tensions were high at some points today), we also traveled through cow country, and if you aren’t aware, the stench is horrible. Cows have needs like anyone, and when you have thousands of cows in a small area, it can get pretty bad. Even in our lodging in the town of Fort Morgan, we can smell the odor when we exit the building. It seems to hover over the entirety of the town (and we traveled from end to end to run some errands). In any case, the residents are extremely friendly and gave us free laundry and bike tune ups as well as invited us to watch some movies and relax at the local Elk Lodge. To feel better about the day and cool down, a few friends and I went to DQ and got some blizzards. Those can make anyone happy. We talked for a while and vented about our frustrations so far on the trip. I’m hoping the rest of this week is better, because for the next four days, we are doing 90+ miles a day without much programming in essentially the same terrain.