Day 37 (7/8): Lamar, CO; 65 Miles

Turns out some of the guys didn’t take last night in La Junta so easy…opting for a night out on the town with some local community college kids. The team woke up to be informed that we would be riding just a little down the street to a house where some new “friends” had made us breakfast. Apparently last night Ezra, Pops, Brendle, Donde, and some others met up with the locals: Andy, Chad, Alli, and Sam…went out on the town (where our friends waited outside because they weren’t 21???)…then went back to the community college campus to play hide and seek??? Apparently Ezra and Ms. Alli took to each other…and there’s speculation that Andy took to Brendle a little….haha. All in all just a bizarre night.

So throughout all this sillyness our local friends agreed to make breakfast…so we get on the bikes and go to their teeny house…where Andy royally comes out onto the deck and declares “Ooohh you guys look so Sh’nazzy in you Sh’pandex.” Needless to say at this point we were all a bit freaked out….but our new friends were hospitable and welcomed us in. So there we are in a living room with no furniture, while our friends served up some egg and cheese omelets they had stayed up all night making (after making a 4 am walmart run). The food actually wasn’t so bad and we enjoyed some pleasant convo before huddling together on the porch for a team pic. Finally it was time to hit the road after our unique little La Junta experience. Only on JOH….

Pretty flat and easy day on the bike…though not without a few more unique experiences. Mr. Wes Pitts joined us on the bikes today and was actually a pretty strong cycling considering his lack of experience. It wasn’t till about halfway through that the weird stuff started happening…

So at first there were a few grasshoppers on the road (all on the right shoulder where we were riding, interestingly). But gradually there’s numbers seemed to grow till we were literally riding through a minefield of grasshoppers…and these suckers were HUGE! Not only huge but they liked to clump together in massive mounds of grasshopper. Couldn’t help but run over the darn things…which resulted in a delightful splat that ended up on several guys legs and even made a sweet stain on Nick’s jersey. It was madness!

And if the plague of the locusts wasn’t enough, just a little further up the road I hear a scream and look up to see Jay and Chad Small looking at each other with Home Alone-like faces…only to look down and see a snake slithering right below where I was riding…aaaahhhhh!! Tried to lift my feet up but they were clipped in….it was absolutely hilarious our whole paceline was freakin out. To be honest the snake was in a much worse position than we were, but hey…snakes are freaky!

So then we role up to Farley’s stop where he was nonchalantly shaving his legs with an electric razor right on the side of the road…which on any other day would be pretty weird but it was par for the course today. Finally our trip through the twilight zone came to an end as we pulled into Lamar (a pretty small town) and lodged up at the local high school.

The gym had some cool ropes to climb on…which I would have loved to trade for some AC. We hung out and mostly took naps for a little bit before dinner time.

For dinner we headed over to Mary and Dan Minor’s house…a couple of cycling enthusiasts who had heard about the trip through friends and wanted to help out. Jim and his wife…fellow enthusiasts and neighbors to the Minors…were also there and had cooked us some spaghetti. Stuffed our faces and even watched a little of the Tour de France down in their basement.

Back here at the gym we have the rest of the night off…so we just be hangin out. Just glad we made it through bizarro day alive.