Eads, CO

I make rules and break rules.


I’m camped here in the Eads City Park. It’s free but the restrooms are a football field away and I’ve been told by locals not to drink the water that’s available here. So, I washed down as best I could amidst the more than a dozen other riders who are camped here. They’re on a cross-country ride for MS. Up the street in a motel is a 14-person tour from the Adventure Cycling Association. Both groups are westward bound. I turn my nose up at them! They are supported by vans and just have to ride their bikes, not haul all of their equipment. Sissies!


The only problem with our site is that it is next to the town’s grain weighing station and grain silo. This is harvest season for winter wheat. Huge trucks rumble through the station every few minutes kicking up clouds of dust. I asked the weighing agents how late trucks will roll and was told they “might” stop about 11 p.m. Coming into town machines were chewing through to-the-horizon fields, each machine enveloped in its own golden cloud of thrashing dust. When their bellies were full they’d drive over to a field-side semi and regurgitate their recent consumption.


I pulled in here about 4 p.m. Yes, yesterday I said I would not ride past 1 p.m. Ah, but when I left Pueblo this morning there was a slight tailwind, the skies were cloudy, the temperature moderate and the route as flat as the desk on which your computer sits. I reached my initial destination, Sugar City, before noon. It turned into a 114-mile day but I wanted to take advantage of the good conditions that may not occur again.


This seems to be correction country. Today I passed two correctional facilities, one for the county, the other for the state. Very impressive structures. On the way to Pueblo I passed the Federal maximum security facility in Florence. It’s considered the most secure correctional institution in the country. Part of it is buried underground. It holds the baddest of the bad.


Mid morning I stopped at the Boone hardware/grocery/post office for some chocolate milk and a pack of nabs. I was quizzed by a trio of coffee-drinking geezers about my start and end points, why I was doing it, how long it was going to take, etc. After I explained things one of them said, “You’re about the biggest fool I know of. That woman of yours who dropped you off and drove back home is the smart one. And if she has any sense at all she’ll find her a smarter man than you and leave your butt in Virginia Beach.”


The rest of the day was spent pondering the fate of the automobile industry as I rode along side hundreds of empty rail cars designed to haul cars. The side-lined cars stretched for more than 30 miles on rusting rails.