Day 41, June 28th 2008, beginning in Denver, Colorado

When Paul and I awoke, we decided we'd hit a breakfast place. Lauren had some essays to write, so she met up with Seth to work on them. We made plans with Caroline to meet at the art museum after we were done with breakfast.

We rode to the breakfast place which would leave us only about a mile and a half from the museum. After filling up, we called Caroline and headed over.

The museum was pretty cool. I haven't been to too many art museum's in my day, and definitely saw a lot of cool stuff. I especially enjoyed the contemporary stuff. One blue cylinder was reflective and also did very neat things with sound reflection that I could not get over. Caroline's favorite exhibit was one that featured a bunch of quilts from Gee's Bend, a place tucked away from other civilization in Alabama.  We all enjoyed a certain one with a bunch of random thoughts written in words in a huge sort of river looking like pattern.

After the museum, Caroline took us to this vegetarian place where we got a good pizza made with fake sausage. Once we filled up there, we were employed to help Caroline fix her flat tire on her bike that was parked outside of the museum. We all headed back to their house and Paul and I organized all of our stuff to get going. Unfortunately we didn't get to see Lauren, as she was busy preparing for Bolivia, but she did call. We told Caroline to keep singing, and that we hoped to see them again.

As we headed for Boulder, it dawned on us… we would finally get a day of rest completely off of the bike. Boulder was a quick ride, slightly uphill for a little while. When nearing town, I developed a lead on Paul, and pulled off a scenic overlook. We were a few miles out and could see the whole city. When he caught up with me, Paul nearly cried tears of joy at the beautiful sight ahead. It was a nice view, but more importantly completely downhill into Boulder. We were nearly done.

We immediately noticed that the town was mobbed with bikers. It was definitely a viable, and catered to mode of transportation, which was refreshing. We easily navigated to Russ's house, a friend from Bristol who we would be staying with for our duration.

Russ was happy to see us, and us him. We were ready to relax for the first time in a while, and had a fun night planned as many of the students were back in town for summer classes. Guitar hero, lying on Russ's hearth, looked so lonely upon our arrival. We remedied the situation by jamming on it for a bit before we ate. Paul won't admit it, but he definitely learned a few things watching me play. Hey, I'm here to teach.

Russ cooked up some pasta and Garlic bread that was tasty. We got some booze for the festivities, and Russ had some people over prior to our departure (some call it pregaming).

We hung out for a while, and then headed to a bar down the street that had an open rooftop. We had a lot of fun being the crazy guys who biked across the country. We ended up going to another bar a while after which was fun too. It was just a good night. We were happy to be in Boulder, which seemed like a really cool place.

When last call lights came on, we headed back to Russ's with many of the people from the large crew that headed to the bar. We hung out for a bit and fell asleep quickly thereafter. No alarm for the following day. Ahhh…

Life was good.