Rubber ducks and gasoline spills go hand in hand

Its been about a week so I thought I'd give another update. My legs are feeling really strong, today Pat and I kept a constant pace of 30mph on flat ground and were out running cars. Before the trip I was only able to reach that speed on flat ground for a few seconds but I felt fine after keeping it up through the entire town.

Colorado is beautiful, Utah was also but I got tired of the state and the riding was very difficult (record breaking heat and 14% inclines) in Utah. Telluride was a nifty little town, they put on an amazing fireworks show for the Fourth of July. Unfortunately I think the show actually ended earlier than planned due to a huge firework igniting very low to the ground and actually spraying the crowd in sparks. Most of the crowd laughed and I thought it was awesome, but latter I learned it started 3 small forest fires. Apparently they got two of them put out before we left in the morning but I havent heard any word on the third.

Before we entered Telluride we climbed up to Lizard Head Pass which was at an elevation of 10,222 feet. On the way we entered a tiny mountain town called Rico. After stopping at a gas station in town for snacks we got to watch a gasoline spill, they called the fire department but I offered to take care of the problem if they gave me a match. From what we learned or could guess it was a local tradition to have a rubber duck race on the Fourth of July. When we were told about this duck race I envisioned rubber duckies with sails or little motors, but instead they really were regular rubber ducks. They released them into the Dolores River and all the locals gathered on a bridge which was the end of the race. Having nothing better to do the firefighters were the ones in the river catching all the ducks and determined who won. The winner got $1000! The race wasnt actually exciting but it was fun to see how pumped up the locals were about the race.

We rode through our first rain storm. It was cold and there was even a little bit of hail. Alot of the cars that passed us while it was raining honked, waved, yelled, or just looked plain surprised that we were crazy enough to ride up a mountain in the rain. An old couple gave us a bunch of plastic grocery bags to put over our bike bags (panniers), so while it rained we looked ridiculously ghetto with plasic bags over our bikes but it worked, unfortunately we didnt get a picture of it.

Live Free or Die Hard was released I want to see that and Sicko, but I havent seen a theatre in a long time. New Harry Potter movie and book coming out soon too. Pat and I were joking about how we would mount the book on our handlebars and switch off reading out loud to each other.