Tour Divide Blog - Day 24
Hi guys! It's been an epic last week! Last Monday, after travelling through Silverthorne, Frisco and Breckenridge we hit the road only to get caught in genuinely one of the scariest lightning storms through the Colorado basin! We literally were redlining it as lightning forks struck to our left, right behind and even in front. I would've loved to seen my watt output on my pedals! With nowhere to shelter our only option was to push to the next town, 50 km away. We rode through the remaining part of the basin through the night again to get to Solaris about 2am. I was wrecked!
Since leaving Colorado and crossing into New Mexico things have got even tougher. It all started when the owner of our scheduled food stop shop heading out of Colorado had a flat tyre and decided not to open up! So we pushed on another 40 miles to find the restaurant on the map had been shut for the last 2 years! With close to 100 miles ahead without food or water we were in a little trouble! But this lovely lady who'd seen us from her cabin came out and invited us in for lunch! And she insisted we took more food for our overnight camp! Amazing! Her name was Pam, here she is in the photo of us on the balcony with the family!
I was dumbstruck with gratitude and how wonderful humanity can be, but it melted my brain as I realised after 10 miles from her house that I'd left my passport there!!! We cached our gear and had to ride back to get it! Ouch! That day, our first night in New Mexico, was the beginning of the storms....and mud! A big day the next day, in fact, the last few days have been tough due to the mud and some of the toughest climbing of the route in my opinion. After Abiquiu 40 miles of rough and rocky climbing was never ending! It seems we've hit an early monsoon season here!
So, after a painfully slow couple of days we planned for a big day yesterday to pull ourselves back on track. We set off from Cuba at 2am planning to put the 200 miles between us to reach Pie Town. Well we did and I'm sat in the world famous Pie-o-Neer cafe eating pie! Kathy and Stanley are feeding us free pie, we must look in need!
The famous Kathy from Pie-o-Neer, alongside Nicklaus from Switzerland, Mike and myself.
It was more than epic yesterday....23 hours on the bike, 19 hours of actual cycling...and we got caught in yet another storm. Making the route unrideable. The mud was so bad it clogged my bike so bad it wouldn't even roll when pushed!
After some work on it I had to push the last 15km after 290km of riding!! We eventually rolled the final few km. We arrived here wet and muddy just before 2am. Frazzled, but moral is high thanks to Kathy at Pie-o-Neer :)
Only 307 miles to go, but I'm learning that New Mexico is making it hard for us so anything is possible! Ha! An hour servicing Lightning McBenjamin this morning has got him back up and running for another big day...fuelled by pie! Chat soon guys.
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