Day 53: Eads, CO

WE MADE IT TO COLORADO!

There's something very sweetly satisfying about bicycling out west. I can't really quite explain it, but you should definitely try it sometime.

Tribune, KS was exciting in ways we never thought Kansas could be. Our last night in Kansas, of course...

We arrive in Tribune somewhat late after lounging for 6 hours in Leoti. We arrived sometime in the evening and headed over to Karen's Kitchen for some Mexican food... they ran out of beans. We made a bad decision to take out the video camera at the "restaurant" and Johnny ended up chasing me out of the establishment into the street trying to get control of it. It's all on video, of course. Afterwards we head over to the city park pavilion to set up camp. DRay, Johnny and I put up our tents/bug nets under the pavilion, Jonathan stays over at the Ampride gas station (also the center of action in town) to make phone call(s). We get cleaned up at the pool across the street, Johnny and I start to doze off in our tents and DRay heads off to do laundry because that's what we make him do.

That's when the fun started.

Johnny and I hear a very loud air raid alarm that lasts about 5-10 minutes. As the last klaxon fades away, I mutter "THAT was annoying" and go back to half-sleep. Wisdom itself.

About four minutes later a dude in a pickup truck shows up and pulls up right to our tents. "Your friends asked me to pick you up, we're under tornado warning." Of course Johnny and I know all about weather like this and start to reassure him that we'll be just fine. We find out the gentleman's name is Junior and his daughter works over at Ampride. Like a switch being thrown, the rain starts coming down sideways and our tents threaten to take off the ground. We are quickly convinced to take Junior up on the offer. Then some of our camp items start to get whisked off into the ether and rain is flying through the pavilion sideways - Johnny and I of course react with catlike instincts as I throw things into the back of the pickup while Johnny grabs the video camera. "We're in the middle of a tornado!" he says to the camera. "Get your stuff in the truck!" I yell. Junior apparently has done this before and stands in the middle of the pavilion and tells us about the annual rainfall in Colorado. We finally get everything into the truck and head off VERY slowly through the flooded streets to DRay and Jonathan awaiting us at Ampride. Totally dry of course. Punks.

The sheriff shows up at Ampride, makes a few calls and books us at the local Lutheran church. He asks for all our IDs and runs a background check. After a round of secondary questioning with Johnny about his extra driver's license, we're off in Junior's truck again over to the church. It seems like the worst is over, but we're all a bit shook up. Our stuff explodes in every direction when we get to the church - tents drying, shoes drying, bibles drying... it looks like a war zone. We crash hard and try to understand what happened just before sleep comes to us.

Day 52 was gorgeous of course. We slept in a little bit at the church, our stuff dried out completely, and we rode yesterday like four dudes glad to be alive.

Thirteen miles into yesterday's ride we reached COLORADO! The giddiness overtook us, we raced for the state line and took nutty pictures climbing the Welcome to Colorado Sign. Those are forthcoming and definitely worth waiting for. Spirits were high as we pedaled the first few miles into our sixth state.

At lunch we stopped in Sheridan Lake, where a mechanic kept a supply of chimichangas in a freezer in the back room in case anyone was crazy enough to stop in Sheridan for lunch. He happened to mention we had more "weather" coming in, and was kind enough to show us on the internet the radar picture for our area. We panicked and raced the last 28 miles to Eads, where we beat the storm by about 7 hours. Good thing we hurried. In Eads we wandered all around town trying to find a place to stay, but it was a big election day in the county seat so voting took top priority. The wonderful people at the County Courthouse finally took us in and let us sleep in the Community Room (aka Tornado Safe House). We used the kitchen to whip up some omelettes and knocked off a half gallon of Rocky Road before bedtime. The storm wasn't too bad - we were relieved because if the tornado siren went off again the entire town would be congregating in our bedroom. We had some great discussion last night about the trip and our reflections on our experience. I think we all got a lot out of it.

We're not in Kansas anymore. Bet you didn't see that one coming.