Day 36 La Junta to Colorado Springs CO

Overnight total via train: 450
Day total 92
Trip total 2,092 (not counting train mileage, we are not that bad of cheaters)

There is something luxurious about waking up in a train car, even if slightly cramped, and even if the sleep part did not really happen. I did find the rocking of the train over rails relaxing, but my mo is pretty much to not sleep before something exciting is about to happen (so you can guess how much sleep I have been getting this trip). And today, we are arriving in the west and that is exciting.

The large train windows offer views of a vastness I have never seen before. This morning Nik and I watched the fog roll off a hazy horizon under huge expansive skies as we slowly woke up, unable to follow our typically morning routine of waking quickly and hopping on our bikes to beat the heat. This morning our bikes were still stowed and while we soakes up some dratically different senery, at a accelerated pace of 77 miles a hour.

We had complimentary breakfast (in the dinning car) with a couple who were taking the train from New York (where they were visiting her brother in a nursing home upstate) back to their home in Arizona.  They were excited for us to be exploring the west and had lots of suggestions for further adventures. I particularly liked the idea of rafting the Colorado River to the Grand Canyon.

Our first day in Colorado has treated as well. The weather is cooler and drier and although we were constantly biking up hill today it is a gradual climb which is way less grueling than the constant up and downs of the east coast hills. As a result our morning of riding went smoothly and we were made good time. It is moments like these where the world breaks down into two types of people;
1. Those that would at this point say "Hey we are making good time we can check into our hotel room in Pueblo (where we already have a reservation) and have a relaxing evening."
2. Those that would say "Hey we are making good time let's cancel our reservation and see if we can make it all the way to Colorado Springs today."

Because everyone reading this blog is close friends and family I don't need to tell you which group Nik and I fall into. But I will say this, in Colorado Springs and the mountains are gorgeous.

Photo dump four: Tourism

We aren't good tourists.  When offered the chance to see cultural places, events, or eat regional foods from new cities we visit, we typically try to find a park to run in, and then go back to where we are staying and cook dinner.  So the fact that we did anything 'touristy' in St. Louis, much less the MOST touristy things in St. Louis is nothing short of incredible.   That being said, the Arch is pretty cool.  

As are the views from top.  It's pretty massive at the base as you can see in the earlier pictures. 

But quite cosy at the very top.  The elevatorsecond are tiny round rooms on a cable.  They can just barely fit five people at a time in each.  Of course we rode to the top with a woman who was incredibly claustrophobic and who completely ignored the mock up at the visitor center (see Molly's pictures).  So she freaked out the whole way up.  

Ah...Anhueser-Busch.  Such an amazing, striking well kept brewery campus. Such terrible terrible beer.

Those are 3600 bbl aging tanks.  They have more than 60 of them at this brewery. 

Nothing like a little Gilded Age wrought iron and brass decoration for your original brew house. 

They had five mash tins, later runs and kettles running parallel in what is essentially just the show brewery.  Each was at least 100 bbls.  The woman giving the tour, either because she didn't know any better or because she was being paid to play dumb kept insisting that this was 'the only brewhouse' at the brewery and that they brew 'all the beer' in that room.  

Look!  Proper technique for entering a confined space!  They even have hard hats.

A few things struck me about the tour.  One, AB has managed expectations very well for their brewery.  You get horses, some beechwood chips, some fancy rooms tha look important and a free beer.  Sure they talk about the process, but not a whole lot.  Your average visitor doesn't care how it's made as long as they get a free beer at the end of the tour.  Second, the parts of the tour that talk about the beer are remarkably similar to your average craft brewery.  I wonder if they took a cue from craft, or if craft took a cue from them, or if there is just not a whole lot of ways to talk about making beer.

Day 35 Kansas City to LA Junta CO

Day total 0! (most sedentary day of our trip so far and feeling pretty good about it, knowing that in a few days we will be at the base of the Rockies looking up).

But before the Rockies something completely different,  a train. At 10:45 tonight Nik and I will take our places in our roommette aboard Amtrak. We will ride/sleep for ten hours and arrive in La Junta Colorado (540 miles total) tomorrow morning ready to face the Rockies. Our bikes are safely packed into bike boxes and loaded as cargo, many thanks to John Senior and Phil for helping us detach pedals and handle bars and pack them up. This is the farthest Nik and I have been from our bikes since we started our journey. Our bikes are stashed at Union Station (very impressive train station, with a majesty that reminds me of Grand Central Station (without the crowds or inherent aggression of everything native to New York City), and we are at Grinders eating Salad (woot) and digesting all the amazing pre-boarding craft beer we had at Cinder Block, a new craft brewery moments away. The moon is full, our spits are high ans we are off!

Day 34 Entered Kansas City

Day total 62
Trip total 2,000

We left the ranch and entered Kansas today, on the way we had the good fortune of having lunch with Eric's generous parents. His mother is a sweet German woman originally from Austria and what is now the Check Republic her husband Roger, grew up in Milwaukie. She cooked us a calorie sustaining breakfast of viennese pancakes with blueberries they picked themselves and a loaded omlette with sausage, bacon and potatoes. We piles our plates, but passed on the champagne to be somewhat abstimious.

It was pretty intense.  Although, Nik and I have both lost some weight by basically eating everything we can get our hands on (and more often than not is generously offered). I do find myself missing eating light foods and am basically craving salad all the time, but that will probably be a craving I will have to cater to after Kansas City BBQ.  

Substancially fueled, we hopped back on our bicycles to finish up the short day of biking.  Our first stop in Kansas City, well REI of course. I told Nik considering the ridiculous amount of time we spend at REI in Boston it's a good thing we biked 2,000 miles to go to one in the middle of the country.  But Nik's sleeping pad has punctuated and we thought their return policy would let him swapping his old for a new one. In the end not the case. 

We pulled out of the parking lot and I got my fourth flat tire of the trip (but first one on my front tire, usually they happen on your back tire because that is where the majority of your weight sits). Not so much a flat as my front tire just gave way, which is sort of expected when you have biked 2,000 miles on it over all kinds of terrain with weight. Sometimes I look at our bikes and am amazed that such simple machines have gotten as so far.

Anyway, flats are always frustrating (even when they are justified) and so is traffic (even when expected), and we spent the afternoon dealing with both, so by the time we got to John (father of my good frind from college also named John) and his wife Peggy's house in Overland Park Kansas Nik was cranky (anyone that knows Nik knows what a rare and therefore significant occurance this is).

We pulled up to the driveway (after battling what we call suburbia hell, where no road goes straight through so you are forced to follow a maze like pattern to reach your destination), sweaty and cranky. Peggy jumped out to greet us "you made it!" and welcomes us in as If we were her long lost children. 

Peggy and John (who so far are my evidence that people in the Midwest are just as kind and easy going as everyone says they are), took us to a family party at her sister's house a few blocks away. The characters we met and the events and booze that followed were uncannily similar to happy hour in Lockhart; overly generous people who are both interesting and interested,  lawn games and some.very very good food (tamales) and craft beer (Boulevard). Needless to day Nik's mood was lifted. 

Day 33 Katy Trail to Centerview MO

Day total 80
Trip total 1938

And tonight we stayed with Steve's former rugby coach and his wife Alison on their ranch in Centerview Missouri with seven horses.