We're done. I'm sitting in the Denver public library, about to ride to the airport, and home to California. We left Jasper early early in the morning of May 30, and arrived here yesterday. I broke one bike frame and one bike fork, 3 spokes, and had about 10 flat tires. Clint had one flat tire and hurt his finger on a tent stake. Clearly some one is out to get me. 

  Despite the damages, this trip was amazing. We haven't figured out the exact details yet, but it worked out to something like 1500 miles, 10 times across the continental divide, 50,000 feet of climbing, and about 5 showers each. 

    All that, and we biked through one of them square states. I know what you're all saying: "Wyoming isn't square. It's actually a curving 3 dimensional object bounded by lines of latitude and longitude that only appears square when it's projects in a certain way on to a flat surface."

   Whatever. If Mr. Mercator says that Greenland and Africa are the same size, and that Wyoming is square, then who am I to argue?

    Anyway, I feel better saying it's square, because its mostly pretty boring, and a state with an uninteresting shape has more right to be boring. The last day in Wyoming continued the trend of flat. We rolled along a grassy plain, with threatening thunderclouds overhead, until we passed the Colorado border.

   All of a sudden: mountains!!  The Colorado/Wyoming border follows no physical features, and yet seems to perfectly divide the landscape. Uncanny - a lot like when we crossed into California from Oregon 2 years ago, and all of a sudden it changed from cloudy and cold to sunny and warm and a Jetta with four blondes in it whizzed past with the radio cranked up on Britney.   
  In the 2 days we've spent in Colorado we've experienced two wildely different facets of it's persona. we pulled into Granby day before yesterday at about 4 pm with nowhere to camp. A passing cyclist suggested we ask the local rodeo if we could set up a tent in the back, and to our surprise they said sure!

  We spent the evening watching the rodeo, an event steeped in patriotism and history. It began with a ceremony in which the Navy, Marine Corps, Army, U.S., Colorado, Liberty, and various other flags were paraded around the arena by women on horseback while the commentator spoke for a few minutes about the the men and women lost in service to their country, and the need to remember 9/11. After  a couple of hours, we returned to the tent and fell asleep that night to the strains of country music and bull-riding, watching yet another beautiful sunset over the Rockies.

   We caught a shuttle into downtown Denver the next day, and discovered that Gay Pride weekend was in full swing. It was quite a transition from the rodeo to being told by a very drunk reveler that I was "super sexy". Well - my quads are ripped.

   Lacey is flying in tomorrow to hang out with Clint for a couple of days. They'll take the train home on Thursday. For me, though, its off home as quick as I can to pack up my life and drive back across the country to Washington DC, where I have a new job starting july 9th.

   It's been a great trip. I'll post photos in the next couple of days, and a final blog.