Day 45, July 2nd 2008, beginning in Boulder, Colorado

We rose slowly and I spent some time online since we only had to ride a short distance to FoCo (Fort Collins, come on stay with me). We took our traditional goodbye picture with Russ, who showed us such a great time, and just like that we were off. We rode all the way to Fort Collins with no stops. We even passed out some guy on a speedy road bike with no gear climbing uphill. Ahhhhh, we are animals.

We passed an Olive Garden entering town. Remembering there lunch special, which had unlimited in the description, we stopped there. We called out couchsurfer Sarah and invited her to come as it was a mile from her house, but she had an appointment at the vet, and is coincidentally enough in vet school.

We finished lunch quickly enough to meet Sarah at her house right before she left for the vet. She introduced us to her roommate Lori before she left. Lori, from Breckenridge, who was there while Dumb and Dumber was being shot, was also going to be starting vet school in the fall. Other interesting fact we learned about Lori was that she was on the U.S. ski team, and holds a black belt in Tae Kwon Do.

Lori, Paul, and I chatted for a while, while watching SportsCenter on ESPN. When Sarah returned, she informed us that she had a staff meeting she had to hop to for about an hour. As it was near downtown, she offered to drop us off while at the meeting and meet up with us afterward. It was a plan. For the first time in Colorado history, it began to rain.

Nothing major of course, so we walked around anyway. Definitely a cool downtown area where we got one of our favorite foods to hold us over… ice cream. Shortly after Sarah called and met us right near where she had dropped us off. She took us to this independent film theater to check out what they would be playing. They had a special that night for free entrance on what seemed to be a cool movie starting at 9:30. All they said is beer sales were encouraged. Cool, we agreed we'd catch it.

Lori had a softball game that we headed to after the theater. I cheered obnoxiously for their team as if I were a die hard fan that had been following "The Scumbags" (their acutal team name) for years. The Scumbags appreciated as apparently I was their only fan in history. It was a lot of fun, and they ended up winning, as I've heard they usually do.

After the softball game, the team and their fanbase went to a Pizza Pub called Old Chicago's. The team is definitely a collection of characters, and the pizza was good. We'd have to eat quickly to make the movie. One of the local brewers, New Belgium, has a beer called Fat Tire that everyone had been raving about since we got to Colorado. Paul decided he'd get a glass fit for a king full of the stuff. When we decided it was about time to leave for the movie, Paul received his second massive pitcher-like glass of Fat Tire , removing any chance of us making it to the movie. We were having such a good time there, no worries.

After a while of story telling and inquiries about our trip, and invitations to parties, we headed back to Sarah's and Lori's place. Paul fell asleep quickly, perhaps with New Belgium's assistance, and Sarah and I chatted for a while. I found out that she went to South Africa twice, nearly doing her masters there before deciding on Vet school. She is a driven girl with cool experiences; refreshing at our age right fogies?!? She was also willing to trust strangers, because we had met a few hours ago and now she was letting us sleep in her house. However, as Sarah mentioned, she always had Lori there to kick anyone's ass if need be. Seriously.

Before bed, we tentatively planned a hike and a brewery tour for the following day. We were happy to be in Fort Collins and above all with such good company.

Life was good.