Day 38-Lamar CO to Garden City KS

It was another very early morning, 5am wake up, I look outside to see it is still pitch black but we get up, pack our things, deflate our sleeping pads put on our chamois and get on our bikes just as the sun is rising. With 100 miles ahead of us we got on the roads just before 6am. I rode with Brandon again and David who I have hardly ridden with all summer, last time we tried he could only go the first 30 miles because of asthma but we have dropped down a lot in altitude which helps a lot, started at about 3700ft and ended at 2800ft, we haven't been this low since we left Washington. At about the 35 mile marker we finally left Colorado, sad to leave because it has been such a fun state but border crossings are always fun and we are into Kansas now. Kansas has easily the least exciting state sign we have seen so far though. Colorado was the top one by far, giant wood sign, Kansas has a tiny little metal one and two rotten pieces of wood, might be a good indicator of how excited we are for Kansas, soon after the border we also crossed into the next time zone, now in central time, loosing an hour is not good for our sleep schedule. Up until about 70 miles we were moving real fast, it was all flat or slightly downhill some of the time with a tail wind so we were averaging over 20mph for the whole time, could hardly feel how hot it was because the wind was cooling us off. at 70 miles we hit some awful rolling hills that took a toll on us, David's feet started killing him and we were getting tired, we made it another 15 miles over the rolling hills until we hit rack time at noon 15 miles out from arrival so we had to rack the rest of the way in. David tried to say that Brandon and I should just keep going and push to get to the end but it was my goal to ride every mile I ride with my whole pace line and Brandon was on the same page so we couldn't just leave David, we all racked and got to our stage up point together.

Our arrival was great, we rode into Mosaic of Garden City to see them out front waiting for us and cheering. They have a huge facility, looks like a converted warehouse but theyy have made great use of the space. We ate lunch and cake with them then of course had a dance party. One of the members who told me to call him cowboy was having a blast, we danced together for a while and he had a huge smile the whole time, despite the tough day he was the reason I had the energy to keep dancing. After our visit we had to ride a few miles to lodging but well worth it because we had an incredible sponsor put us up in a hotel and take us all to Golden Corral buffet for dinner, we were beyond thankful for a real bed, air conditioning and endless food.

Tomorrow is a short day, only 55 miles to Dodge City and 6:15 wake up which means we get to eat the hotel breakfast instead of crew chief breakfast. yipee!

A couple additional notes for this blog. I found a website to track all the cities that we stop in to give you a rough idea of our route so far, as you can see we don't take the easy way across the country, that's why thay call it trans route man's route. Secondly and most importantly we are trying to make a big mid summer push to reach our total goal this summer for our combined JOH fundraising total between all routes. We are at $534,000 and aiming for $650,000. It has been incredible that random people we meet that ask what we are doing donate, we have had a family walking out of a funeral make a donation, a random lady we met on the road who knew Pi Kapps when she was in school donate, a cyclist my pace line ran into  on the road coming into Boulder, a traveling gospel musical group we ate dinner with at a church in West Yellowstone donated their profits from the show they did that night to Push America. The genorosit and kindness we have seen is shocking. If you are able to make a donation or can help me spread the word please do. To donate or share my message visit my fundraising page at http://support.pushamerica.org/goto/sammargolis