We left Sidney after a disappointing breakfast at the disappointing restaurant attached to the hotel. We were very briefly on the I-80 before turning onto Nebraska state highway 19, a nice country back road flanked on either side by corn fields and running parallel to a railway track. The sky was domed with a thin veil of gauzy clouds that all but obscured the blue, and the air hung on the cusp of cool and warm, as if it couldn't quite commit to either one.
It wasn't long before Nebraska state highway 19 became Colorado state highway 113. Almost immediately we noticed that the towns we passed through seemed less desperate, more hopeful and in better repair. In Sterling we were delayed briefly at a light as police guided vehicles through from another direction. It may have been a funeral procession, although we arrived too late to see the hearse, and not everyone had their lights on. (Do they do that here? Or is that just in Canada? Or maybe no one does it anymore. How could you tell anymore in Canada, now that we have daytime running lights?)
We ate up miles very quickly on the I-76, arriving in Denver around 1 p.m. We ate lunch at a sushi joint called Tokyo Joe's, where all the staff were white and probably college kids. When we got back to where we'd parked our bikes, the meters had been bagged to indicate a tow-away zone. We talked for a while with the meter-bagger, who was easily the friendliest parking control person I've ever met. We talked about bikes, and whether or not we thought Denver was much like Vancouver (it isn't, in my opinion; more like a nicer version of Calgary).
We rode the I-25 South from Denver, through an interminable stretch of suburbs which actually did remind me of Vancouver. By now the blue of the sky was clearly visible, and enormous white clouds moved across it like a heard of buffalo migrating slowly across the plains.
Just a little South of Pueblo we pulled into a rest area, and talked for a while with very lean, black Harley rider. He was returning to Denver from LA and Phoenix, happy to be out of the latter. Too hot, he said.
We left the interstate a short while after that for US Hwy 160, which winds its way into the Sangre de Cristo mountains that straddle the border of Colorado and New Mexico. We stopped a gas station to fill up at the junction with Colorado state highway 159. While filling up, we were approached by a local who asked if either of us were from Vancouver.
We answered that we both are from Vancouver (more or less) and he said he'd just heard on NPR that there had been an earthquake there. He didn't have more details, but didn't think anyone had been hurt.
It was now actually cold, as we were, after all, in the mountains. (Colin's GPS pegged our altitude at over 9,000 ft at one point.) We put on our cold weather gear and set out for the 75 mile run down to Taos, each of us wondering how bad the earthquake had been, hoping our family and friends were ok, and thinking about how to get back as quickly as possible if it were serious.
Just as we reached the New Mexico border, the weather began to turn. We'd seen the clouds earlier, and now we were heading straight into bad weather. We pulled over again, and quickly put on our rain gear as well as the cold weather gear, and then set out again.
Luckily, the worst of the storm had already blown through by the time we reached it, and we just got showered on a little. We pulled into Taos around 7:30, and found a place to stay for the night, called home to get details about the quake and everyone's well-being (fortunately, the quake had actually occurred several hundred kilometres from home), and then went out for dinner.(If you're ever in Taos and looking for a place to eat, Tequila's is not a bad choice for Mexican food.)
*****
And now, it's time for everyone's favourite part of the blog: Colin's latest video. Enjoy!
No comments:
Post a Comment