SLUGFEST

Colorado reminds me of Maine, because of the mountains and pines, the remote log cabins and quaint artsy towns that seasonally bloom in tourism, and everyone's love of wilderness and outdoor adventure sports.

Colorado Springs, CO to Hartsel, CO (80 miles)

First time on our bikes in a week - it felt so strange! At one stop, I said to Austin, "Good thing riding a bike is a lot like... riding a bike." Austin responded in a contemplative way, "But... it's not. So who am I?" Most of us got lost several times zig-zagging across a street to stay on a bike path. We biked through a long aluminum tunnel that was only 6.5 feet tall, and pitch black. The trip leaders re-routed today's ride so that we could bike through the Garden of the Gods. This is a park of natural rock formations that are stunning.

Shortly after spending way too much in awe at the Garden of the Gods, we cruised into Manitou Springs. This town was awesome and I stopped to walk around the downtown area with Eliza and Mel. According to a jeweler, Manitou's history includes many tuberculosis patients moving there, because the springs have a high amount of lithium. Now, the town seems to be an artist's retreat in the Rockies, as the downtown was filled with galleries, gift shops, and sculptures.

It seemed like we were falling in love with Manitou Springs, so I went to a cafe for a drink. I asked if they serve sandwiches, as Eliza, Mel, and myself were considering having lunch here and biking past the van and trailer's lunch stop. The cafe didn't serve sandwiches, but they recommended a cafe that does sandwiches. "The sandwiches are good, but the people there are an insane cult and have all their religious beliefs painted on the walls."

So we go to this other cafe for lunch. The two sweeps for the day joined us. The guy working there told us about their specialty tea - yerba mate. None of us had tried yerba mate before, so he offered us all free drinks - cool, free tea!!! We chatted with the workers about Bike & Build, and they told us about their spiritual collective and some of their other tribes.

At that lunch, something clicked. Eliza, Mel, Travis, Rae, and myself decided that we didn't care about getting into the host site by the curfew time. We wanted to waste time, hang out, and have fun. This is a totally different change in mentality for all of us, especially Rae who is usually one of the first people to reach the host site every day. Eliza admitted, "I don't care if the van picks me up." Everything was silly. This whole team is really supportive, and we use the word "shred" as a term of encouragement. However, the five of us coined a new term, the anti-shred: slug. So slug crew was slugging along during this slugfest of a ride, and we didn't have a worry in the world. We speculated at the end of the day that the yerba mate may have been laced with drugs.

Our next stop was in Green Mountain Falls, where there was this wild art structure that had visited the MET. It was a hexagonal maze of mirrors. Every wall was either a mirror, a glass window, or an opening for stairs. It was very trippy for slug crew. We began riding at about 7am, this was mile 26 out of 80, and the time was 2:11pm. We thought it was hilarious.

We reached the van and trailer lunch stop at 4:30pm. Ethan, the van driver for the day, thought what we were doing was great and said simply, "Now this is Bike & Build." We decided to make a plan for when we arrived at the host site. The five of us would pretend to be really mad at each other, and Ethan would call an immediate team meeting and make an argumentative scene. Then he would say, "We're straight slugging!" and we would all turn around and show off the slug tattoos drawn in permanent marker on out lower backs. (It was Tattoo Tuesday.)

The van picked us up at about 7pm. It took us 12 hours to move 60 miles - a laughable pace. Eliza was hiding from Ethan in a tree. We blasted music all the way to the host site, but as we turned into the driveway was blared "Ten Thousand Fists" by Disturbed, so that we could get into character. We all knew that we had had a fantastic day, but now we were all pretended to hate each other in front of the team. The problem? No one was at the host site, they had gone to the bar. Our animosity was stressing some rider's out, so we cut the act, but everyone got a kick out of our idea.

So we arrived in Hartsel, CO as the sun was setting. This is apparently known as "the Chicago of the West" but has a population of like 75 people. The host site was a one-room schoolhouse, but since we were the last ones to arrive at the host site, there was no space available for me to sleep. So I slept on top of the slide in the backyard, and showered with the hose. The stars out here are wonderful, and we could see the milky way! However, at about 3am it began to rain so I squished my sleeping bag inside the schoolhouse.