Day 40: Pueblo, CO to Westcliffe, CO, or "Oh, so THAT'S what uphill is like!"

Miles today: 63.

So I guess we're not in Kansas anymore. The world went from 600 miles of pancake-flat immediately to very big mountains. Had one 14-mile climb during which my favorite moment of the day happened: as I was chugging along slowly but surely at approximately 3 mph (I wish I were exaggerating), 10-year-old Bobby the Nerd in his round wire-rimmed glasses sticks his face up to the window of an old bright yellow VW van that was overtaking me like a train overtaking a slug. The look on his face, equal parts interest and what the hell?, made me smile. His face had disappeared by then (trains move faster than slugs), but when I waved goodbye to little Bobby he popped his head over to the back window and returned my wave, staring at me as the van left me in the dust.

After the descent we stopped for pizza and beer in a small town (Silver Cliff) who shares a border with another small town (Westcliffe) that was surprisingly well taken care of. We've been through countless small middle-of-nowhere towns along the way, and have pretty much gotten used to the fact that a lot of the businesses would be closed and/or run down, but this one was um... not. We took a walk "downtown" and were amazed by how cute and updated everything looked. Asked the woman working at a really cool smoothie place why this town was so much nicer than all the small towns we'd been through until this point, and she told us the town was founded by cattle ranchers over 200 years ago and is now also home to artists and Texans with summer homes. The variety of businesses in Westcliffe show evidence of a seasonal population; real estate agencies, art galleries, and cafés make up the bulk of them.

We decided not to push on to Salida since it was getting a little late; I don't really know what we were thinking when we figured we could continue the 100-mile days in the Rockies, but we fell a little short. After a little searching around we found an RV park/campground that was opened just last year by a school principal and her husband. The campground owner, a super nice and welcoming woman, told us that the ice cream shop next door had the best malts in town. Malts are a big staple of our diet on this trip, so of course we were sold. The shop, Hunger Buster, is owned by the former sound guy for the band KISS. He had unfortunately closed the shop 15 minutes early, but poked out the back door to say hello; he was impressed with our trip and apologized for having turned off the ice cream machines but wished us luck.

Met 6 more riders today: a father and son from Iowa whose blog I had actually read before leaving on this trip, and four British guys about our age, one of whom was kind enough to provide the quote of the day. We stopped and said hello as is customary when passing fellow loaded cyclists, and as we said our Take-cares and Good-lucks I noticed aloud that one of the group and Lou had on the same pair of mountain-bike style shoes. The guy said that his companions, who were all wearing road-style (i.e. more conspicuously cycling-related) shoes, had been making fun of him for holding them back with his clunky shoes. I caught one of the other guys responding to him jokingly as we pulled away, "Yeah... it's not just the shoes."