August 4, 2015
Day 4
Steven makes us breakfast - homemade plum jam, homemade bread, eggs with tomato and avocado. I say something like "anyone who adds avocado to a dish is a friend of mine" and Steven responds that he decided to add it after hearing the story we told about an avocado the night before...After finding out that our layover in Denver will be 16 hours instead of 4, we are sitting in the bus station parking lot, our bikes and bags surrounding us like a pile of ruble, and we wait and hope to get a phone call back from one of the Warm Showers hosts that we called. We split open an avocado that's sitting on the top of my bag and indulge. I even have tiny tapatios packets from the restaurant back in Grandby. A bus station employee walks by and does a double take- she must want us to gather all of our stuff and move (please no), but nope- she just needs to verify that what she's seeing is really happening. "Are you girls... just eating an avocado?" "Yep, nothing to see here."
Breakfast is fantastic - perfectly executed (strong) french press coffee- and we are joined by Lynn and Steven's son Callen (sorry Callen if you're reading this and I'm butchering the spelling). We chat about our story and Emily and Callen hit it off with a mutual excitement over mixing paint colors. Callen piles our bikes and bags onto his bike rack and into his car, we hug Steven goodbye and get ready to take off back to the bus station. I sit in the front seat and feel something behind me- it's an avocado.
Back to the Greyhound Bus Station. We plug in our speakers and take our bikes apart even further to put into boxes for under bus transport. What initially felt like a ton of time before scheduled departure inevitably turns into a mad dash including a 1 mile sprint to a local hardware store to buy a wrench we need and don't have. I don't mind, Lynn's homemade bread was thick. We surprise ourselves again and make it on the bus. Our driver (and frankly most everyone around us) is a character- I'll add a video of her below.
We are on the bus now- will enter Rawlins at about 4:30 or 5pm CO time. Do we surrender a 2nd day of riding or attempt a bit of night riding?