Today was another early start to avoid the high heat (103°). My ride to Greeley Colorado went through areas with no known services. Packing extra water, I headed out of town before sunrise. It wasn’t long before the sun was peeking over the horizon and lighting my way forward. I traveled a service road parallel to interstate 76. No traffic. The noise from the interstate kept me on my toes. I was constantly looking back thinking cars were coming. This has been the loudest traffic day in over a month. I was glad to finally peel away from that road and start heading off Northwest. That’s about the time crossing over a ridge, I got my first glance of the Rockies on the horizon.
I could faintly make out some peaks in the haze. Traffic didn’t pick up for several hours. Unfortunately there was only one way into this town. I just have to deal with what comes my way. Once again this state road had an amazing shoulder.
The morning rush hour brought a fair amount of traffic but I never felt unsafe. That’s when the shoulder disappeared and this two lane road split and turned into a four-lane road. At first I was extremely nervous. The second lane gave any traffic plenty of space to move around me.
Typically adding an extra lane on a road meant I was getting close to a town. But that wasn’t my case. What this really meant was there were hills coming. The extra lane was on both sides of the street for all of the cars to get pass the slow moving trucks or me going up hill. Eventually that four-lane road returned to the two lane with that extra wide shoulder. Today I passed a massive dairy farm with more cows than I’ve ever seen in one location. I’m in a little bit later a cattle farm with more cattle in pens that I never seen (Sorry the picture didn’t turn out)
The mountains continued to get clearer as I moved west. The winds that I expected to be mostly in my face today did not materialize. YEAH. I was clearly anxious today. Concerned about the wind and the heat. I just did not want to get caught in the high heat. I was able to finish up before 10:00am. I found a lovely coffee shop called Still Water Coffee. It turned out to be attached to a church 23 Avenue Church . This was my endpoint where my cousins are picking me up so I can spend some time with them. I’m going to take a couple days off, do some wash, and get some work done on my bike. While I was sitting in the coffee shop, Pastor Dave walked in and asked about my bike outside. We talked about all kinds of stuff. Different bikes rides, planting a church, Ironman triathlons. He gave me a great tour of the church and shared some of the same struggles that my church has. Brad & Megan arrived to take me back to their place for some R&R. It will be fun to spend some time with some more family. I’m looking forward to not riding for a little bit. I know there’s a few hills on the horizon.