Today was pretty average. Acutally, I take that back… Today was the first long day that I wasn’t completely tired at the end. There are several reasons for this.

1) I went to bed around 9:30 pm and got up at 6:30 am. That’s a lot of sleep for Texas 4000. AND it was in a bed – not a gym floor.

2) I had a hearty breakfast at the Baublits house. Eggs, bacon, toast and Diane Baublits’ homemade, homegrown peach jam.

3) We rode pretty slowly today. We didn’t pound out the first 20 miles…or any 20 mile stretches for that matter. We all just cruised around 17 or 18 mph today.

4) It was really flat. Colorado is just as flat as Kansas in the east. Supposedly it was uphill today. But because we were only going up about 900 feet in 86 miles you barely notice it.

As we were cycling out of Las Animas we had a police escort clearing a path for us. The people of Las Animas were obviously really generous. They’ve been hosting Texas 4000 for 5 years and I can see why. We loved them and they seemed to love us.

At our first rest stop we got 3 pies donated to us by Village Inn. Stawberry Hawaiian, Peanut Butter Chocolate and regular ol’ cherry.

On our ride today we passed a military surplus store. Evan bought an empty grenade for some reason. He doesn’t know what to do with it. Or how he’s going to bring it home on the plane. I guess he’ll just put it in the trailer.

Some resident of Las Animas, I don’t know who, gave us a whole bunch of honey. But the honey is in little tubes like pixie sticks. I guess it’s for tea – so you can just put a standard amount in your cup. It’s the best honey I’ve ever had. It has little chunks of sugar in it. I had a few at every rest stop.

Again, we were racing a storm that was supposed to hit Pueblo (where we’re staying) at 2 or 3 pm. The storm never hit but the clouds did look pretty ugly.

We’re staying in a church. It’s a typical church, except that it’s 3 stories high.

Oh we can see the mountains now. It feels like we’re getting somewhere .

All along the road coming into Pueblo we saw little prairie dogs. They would run into their little holes as soon as they saw us coming.