Denver, Sweep, and Today!

Wow. We have had quite the past three days! Let me tell you.. Sunday in Denver we had the celebration service at a highschool football field down the street in the morning and we were sweating our faces off in the bleachers! We had a nice lunch there and then headed back to camp. Papa Kalamazoo was so gracious to do our laundry with theirs at a nice church member's house who lived nearby. That was phenomenal and it allowed for us to make the shuttle bus going from the school to downtown Denver! We toured 16th Street Mall for the day - a whole street of shops and restaurants - with a good bunch of people: PEI Brian, Matty Zantingh, Sarah, Zinger (on the bus), Jody, Paul/Doug, Florentine, and our new friend Laura who paid our bill! What a nice woman! We hung out for a bit in a really neat restaurant called the Hard Rock Brewery... they had 9 sample beers for $5 - some were good, some were not. Then we headed down to the Tattered Cover Book Store which was the best place of my life! no jokes Denise was in all her glory. Then we found our way back to the highschool on the train. For the rest of the evening Denise and I blogged like crazy!! We got some pics up! You are welcome mom. We slept in the school for the weekend and did not get sprinklered on. It was quite a slumber party.

Monday was THE most action-packed day of our trip thus far. Okay. So, it was our sweep day and therefore we ended up leaving camp at around 9:30 once all the gear was loaded up and everyone was out of camp. We lost a few dear members of our team this weekend.. Henry, Tyler, Kerri, Sylvan ( but he is coming back some day) and Dave - you will be missed. And so we gained a few stragglers for the day; Theo-the-last-one-to-leave-camp-always-Bandstra, Kaitlyn-my-precious-lamb-Kuipers, Kevin-i'm-a-baby-Pasma, Doug/Paul and our dear I-have-no-expression-ever-Lawrence. We got a late start to the day and made an immediate Starbucks stop on the trail. Kaitlyn had a teeny tumble. We tried to get in to the Bronco's stadium.. unsuccessful. Lawrence had two flats. The sags went on without us. Quick stop for $2 Monday margaritas! Had some Heidi chain issues, which Lawrence was quick to fix. We then thankfully hit Walter (our dear sag man) for a water stop. Then battled a ridiculous cross wind on the interstate with a looming storm on the left. We beat the worst of it. Made it to the free-food cafe (the owner took care of our bill as tithe to the trip : ) We waited out the downpour as well as our full bellies. And then took off for the last 30 k to camp in Fort Morgan under a pretty rainbow. We thought we had finally made it with no more problems.. buuuuut.. once we were in the city Lawrence was trying to be the trusty navigator, looking at his map and somehow a parked car ran right in to him! He was okay and insisted we bike on.. the car took the worst of it i think. Anyways we arrived at camp that night at around 8:00pm and could not quite believe our day. That is a 13 hour day for us, mark that down for the books.

And today is Tuesday. We had another somewhat late start to the day, battled a rough headwind for most of the day and arrived at camp just before sweep. This somewhat tough finish was balanced out by a refreshing swim in the near by pool! Equipped with two wicked awesome waterslides and a springy diving board, it was free and we had the whole pool to ourselves! Very fun for sure. We are now heading in to beddy for an early morning start tomorrow is predicted to be a scorcher of a day. Good nighto.