HUGE Thanks to Colby, Kansas!

After some introspective thought (and some convincing words from the community here), HBC South decided to stay in Colby for a second night. We slept in, recovered our exhausted bodies, and spent an entire day relaxing and reorganizing the trailer and ourselves for the rest of the ride. And prepared we are!

We'll be waking up at the regular time (5 AM) tomorrow and, while most of us will still be recovering a bit and getting shuttled all the way to appropriately-named Cope, Colorado (Mountain Time Zone, set your clocks back!), a few of us will ride from the Kansas-Colorado border to Cope, emerging victoriously over this plague that briefly set us back.

The community in Colby has been INCREDIBLE, one that makes me and the rest of our riders feel that Kansas has become a kind of second home. The prevailing attitude among the community members here has been, "If these were my children, I'd want someone else to treat them well and make them feel at home."

Carolyn here at the United Methodist Church urged us to stay another day and made arrangements for an extra lunch, dinner, and car rides for any riders that needed it, both around Colby today as well as from Colby to Cope tomorrow. She also called a local supermarket, Dillon's, to provide us with fried chicken, potato salad, and cole slaw for our dinner tonight for free. She is truly an angel! Thanks so much, Carolyn.

In that same category is Dr. Gary Slavens and his wonderful family. A few riders made use of a local medical clinic to help them through the stomach virus and they met Dr. Slavens, who invited us all to his home for dinner tonight with only a few hours' notice. His family prepared hamburgers, hot dogs, and other treats for us that we couldn't be more thankful for. We got to watch the most recent stage of the Tour de France on his TV and we got to play some touch football with five of his seven children. Everyone loved to spend an evening at a real home and it was hard to tear everyone away to go back to bed and prepare for (what was it that we were supposed to be doing on this trip?) biking the next day.

Finally, one last shout out to Alan Sayer, who generously donated his HUGE trailer for us to use in transporting our bikes from Colby to Cope. We pretty much couldn't have done it without him.

If there were one place where we could get ourselves through a stomach virus best, it would be Colby, Kansas. The community reached out to us in a way that was unexpected but truly a godsend. Thanks again, Colby, and hopefully we'll get a chance to take care of your kids someday!

For now, it's off to sleep, then Colorado...

-Eric