Hopkins 4K for Cancer

July 3, 2002

Day 32 (66 Miles) Benkelman, NE to Yuma,
That’s right Colorado (Colo-ra-da)!!! The morning ride rolled by almost unnoticed until mile 30 when we spied a large wooden sign on the right side of the road: “Welcome to Colorful Colorado”. The vegetation changed almost directly upon crossing the boarder. Nebraska had been many short grasses; Colorado has many small scrub bushes and thorny vines. Lunch was in Wray, CO a sleepy little mountain town with a stream, the first running water I remember seeing in a while. Lunch was wonderful, we had a ton of fresh fruit thanks to the Castillo family of Benkelman. I think we had all been craving some fruit other than bananas, so the nectarines and cantaloupe were heavenly.

I rode most of the day with Rajeev. Toward the end of the day we could almost smell our destination and we took off sprinting. The last four miles were covered at a pace of 26-32mph, minus a break to read a marker about the local wildlife. It turns out that Yuma County has the densest population of Prairie Chicken in the country.

Yuma greeted us with a spot in their park to camp and a free Slurpie for everyone from the local 7-11. Yuma presented an interesting camping challenge since we had to store our things in a Cub Scout shed four blocks from the shed. This made for a lot of shuttling and confusion, but nothing we couldn’t handle. The town had one main strip of stores, including a barbershop with the rotating red and white pole, one barber and a line of old grizzly looking fellows waiting for a hair cut. Of course Brent and Adam thought it would be a good idea to get a haircut. Afterward Brent looked normal, Adam resembled a drill sergeant. The barber apparently interpreted “a little shorter” to mean, “show me my scalp.”

Once everyone was settled we went to dinner at a diner called “Woody’s”, which was paid for by the pastor of one of the local churches, who was our contact in the town. After dinner five of us went and recorded a radio interview to be played on the morning show.

Colorado is currently experiencing a rash of forest fires and has such banned all fireworks, campfires, etc. So of course, our evening was finished off by attending the town firework show. The neighboring town of Otis puts on a big show on the July 4 so July 3 Yuma has its chance to shine. The show was great fun, except when the technician miscalculated the wind and we had some burning cinders start raining all around us.
The evening was finished by a combination “We made it to Colorado/It’s the fourth of July/Happy Birthday Skye” Party. The highlight for me was a Root beer float made from Hagen-daz Vanilla Ice Cream (granted it isn’t Ben and Jerrry’s but it is still really good ice cream).

- David Courson