Day 5: August 15th, 2008 – “You should have been riding a tandem”

Telluride --> Dolores

Waking up in a soft bed in a nice hotel in ultra trendy Telluride just didn’t feel right, but I decided to go along with it and visit one of the town’s chic coffee shops for breakfast. After glancing in a few such shops I realized I would rather have a sweet bun at a 7 Eleven with ‘my people’, so I shot the bull with some dirt bikers outside the gas station as we munched on various Little Debbie products and guzzled dollar coffee. I realized I had become warped when, after I saw the bikers and thought they were nuts, they told me I had lost it… All through Colorado people were generally impressed with the distance I had to come rather than the hundreds of miles I had already traveled. I couldn’t wait to have folks start being less impressed with the road ahead of me!

After ‘breakfast’, I headed over Lizard Head Pass, elevation 10,222 ft. A van of old Texans was leapfrogging me the whole time. They’d get out at an overlook and I’d stop to take a picture and we’d chat for a minute or so then repeat the same procedure. After a while they just started yelling “Frisco or bust!” at me out their window, and eventually I just started yelling back, “Bust!!!” I also ran into a Chemist named Gene at the top of the pass. We talked about how the sciences shape the minds of their students and how that can develop into various life perspectives, and then on that note I rolled away down the pass.

As I descended I could see the red rocks of the Mesa Verde region slowly appearing. There was a strong wind blowing up slope that vastly limited what could have been a day of great distance. After Passing through Stoner I was fairly frustrated by the wind but I still managed to make it into Dolores. I stopped at a closed down gas station to examine my maps and see if I wanted to go any further that day. Two cowboys, Wes and Jameson, came by to question me about my travels. They were on their way to a bar and invited me to join, but I told them I wasn’t sure if I was staying in town. Then a young lady named Carrie came along and asked me if I was staying in Dolores that night. She had recently toured through Canada so she knew exactly how much a simile and a welcoming word or two meant. She invited me to stay in the hammock in her yard underneath an apricot tree, and I gladly accepted.

After a set up camp under the Apricot tree I headed back to meet Wes and Jameson at The Hollywood Bar. The place was an authentic old West saloon, complete with town drunks, Mr. CASH, and a boots and hat dress code. An elderly Native American woman and her daughter were milling around the bar with a rack of dream catchers and jewelry they were peddling to the fifteen or so ageing bar patrons slumped over their beers. I ordered the ribs on Wes’s recommendation, and while I ate I watched the Titans Preseason game against Oakland, which we took with a last minute field goal. After I had finished my meal I sat at the bar with Wes, the fully decked out old cowboy with a tattered Stetson, boots, and a cane, and chewed the fat until a group of young attractive women unexpectedly walked in, to which Wes said, “You should have been riding a tandem!” I still have no idea why Maria and the rest of those girls decided to come to that remote old bar in Dolores but I was pretty happy about it and after a few beers I thought about inviting the whole bar back to my apricot tree and hammock to get down.

Day: 67.6mi

Total: 399 mi

Elev. Climbed: 1400 ft

Elev. Difference: -2200 ft

Elev. Peak: 10222 ft