Leaving the Rocky's behind

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We took the later wake up time of 5:30am by default his morning and it still took us longer than normal to get ready. The temperature was cool but nowhere near as cold as the previous 2 days.
We started off slowly to get the body warm and soon realised that we had a slight head wind to counter. We were doing 20km stints for the first rotation through the RV which would take us all the way through our climb for the day. The climb was gentle, rarely getting over 5% and mostly below 4%. I know you're probably sick of me saying the scenery is magnificent (Michael Carra) but it simply is. The pass we go over takes us over 3000m for the second time - I just loving say that! A quick stop is followed by a tremendous 13km descent that averaged around 50km/hr. Just to make it interesting there was a reasonable head wind as well. We changed drivers at this point (Dave for Jeff) and then continued on the descent for another 30km although much less steep at this stage. We stopped for lunch in the township of Walensburg at Tina's Family Cafe. We treated ourselves to a decent sit down lunch and in Tom's case a Full Stack of pancakes. This was 3 x 8 inch fat pancakes covered in butter and maple syrup - I don't know how he does it. We're trying to even up the kms ridden between us, so Tom drives the first 10kms towards Trinidad and Dave and I will do 25kms each. On the way to Trinidad Tom took the undisputed outright lead in the puncture count. We ended the day with a trip to Walmart to Dave's continued excitement. To be honest I wanted to get a toaster as well. A fill up with petrol and then a stressful look for an RV Park before finally settling in for a home cooked dinner of steak, potatoes, coleslaw, beetroot and finally some green vegetable (broccoli).

Tomorrow we could end up at either Pritchard or Springfield (still in Colorado).

Puncture Count Ladder

1st - Tom, 3 plus a failure

2nd - Dave, 2

3rd - Jeff, a slow leak, counted as a puncture when he replaces the tube

4th - Mark, 0

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Comments

[Frances Wilkins]

Strava
OK you lot - I am Dave's sister-in-law. I am green with envy over this trip of yours. I know all Aussies are on Strava but are any of you. If so I would love to send you a follower request for the duration of your trip. Be really interesting to see what you are contending with. Also Dave - Anne has been posting some of your photos on Facebook. there are some really great shots there.

[Mark63]

Response
Hi Francis, glad you're enjoying the blog. I and Jeff (Hilder) are on Strava, Tom isn't. Not sure about Dave.