I'm also a news junkie. Not to the point where I have a news program playing in the background all day long but certainly to the point that if I don't know what's going on in the broader world I feel incomplete. I'm also way too curious about almost anything, which sometimes drove my supervisors crazy. For me, even when I was working, it wasn't a question of thinking outside the box - there simply was no box to begin with.
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This year's ride started and finished in Lamar
with overnight stops in Holly and Springfield
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All of this is a long preamble to something as simple as my most recent bicycle tour which happened to take us to a part of Colorado that I've never spent much time in, or to the point of this blog, thought about. Each year the Denver Post (you know - Denver's only remaining newspaper) hosts a three day bike tour in celebration of a part of Colorado that doesn't otherwise get much thought from those of us along the 'urban corridor' from Colorado Springs to Fort Collins. Aptly called "Pedal The Plains" its a chance to experience the heat, wind, and broad expanse of prairie that still make up the eastern third of Colorado. Oh, and also mingle with folks who more and more seem to be like we used to be but are now seemingly more distant in time, space, and life experience. More than one visitor to these parts makes the comment that they feel they are in another State, and for those of us from the Denver metropolis we might as well be. Some politicians still try to rally support on the belief that there is more that unites us than divides, but having done several of these rides over the last several years I can speak to the divide getting wider, not smaller as the years pass like the tumbleweeds blowing along the lonely byways of the eastern plains.
Former Governor Hickenlooper made a point to mosey out to the starting town of Pedal The Plains each year and to his credit new Governor Polis was at the start of this year's ride in Lamar. Of course, for them its a chance to make an appearance, hobnob with the local politicians, and demonstrate that, at least for one day, people from Denver actually care about what's going on out here. Don't think the divide is getting wider? Just a block from where Mr. Polis was preaching to a lycra-clad cycling choir, there were 'Recall Polis' yard signs aplenty and you had to wonder how warm a welcome the duly-elected current guv was getting from the good folks of Lamar.
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Not that most of the roads featured much traffic, but it was
nice to be supported by Colorado's Finest
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Now, make no mistake, Pedal The Plains is a good time for those inclined to spend hour after hour sitting on a narrow piece of leather pedaling furiously into 90 degree temps and 20 mph headwinds. And this year's ride featured the unique chance to actually ride into Kansas (if you haven't left Denver for points east recently it's the next State over, or as the weatherlady points out, where the Colorado storms head after wreaking havoc in your front-range back yard).
Most of the Pedal The Plains rides feature educational rest stops where us city folks get to mingle with real-life farmers, the people actually responsible for filling the shelves at our local Safeway or King Soopers. I've had the chance to sit in giant combines and talk to kids who have helped birth a calf. This year there didn't seem as much of this as in prior years, perhaps because conditions were such that we cyclists were just trying to survive to the next rest area. But it could also be that the schism between urban and rural Colorado has reached a point where the two sides might grudgingly acknowledge each other, but that's as far as it really goes. Even the educational signage along the route touting all sorts of agricultural facts and figures seemed to be just a token gesture as they bent before the stiff headwinds to the point most couldn't even be read as they bent and flapped in the breeze.
It's no secret that the economic revival has benefited urban dwellers more than rural and the communities we pedaled through, though not as desperate as during the Great Recession (seems a distant memory, doesn't it?) but the main streets still have more vacant space than full, and there's an air of just hanging on that was almost palpable. Many of the locals we spoke to didn't even realize that Pedal The Plains was in town, even though for some of these towns we almost doubled the population, at least for a day. That too was different than in prior Plains rides we've been on, where locals were truly glad to welcome us, to talk, to remember, oh yeah, what connects us.
Still, we left having had a good pedal-about. We gamely battled the elements and made it over roads and hills (yes, they have hills out this way) that seemed to vanish into a shimmer on the horizon. For three days we immersed ourselves in 6 a.m. starts, nightlong rumbling of passing freight trains, showering in a mobile shower truck (with hot water!), and being unable to put on enough sunscreen to stop from burning like the chile peppers being roasted along the road. All in all, a good time. One that I'll be pondering, for better or ill, for some time to come. Like I said, sometimes I think too much.
