So booking the Pueblo hotel room where we paid for 2 days in advance turned out to be our worst decision. Not only was it sweltering hot, but when the front desk kindly gave us a fan at our request, the fan didn’t really help much at all. It was impossibly hot in our room and we had to shower and lay a wet towel on ourselves in order to be cool enough to get to sleep. We had to tape the light switch on because if not firmly taped upward the light would flicker and go out. In our non-smoking room we found a cigarette butt stuck to the wall right above my headboard. When we pooped it wouldn’t go down; with a little patience we got it flushed. But later it wouldn’t flush even when we peed. So we got a plunger from the front desk and the plunger broke when we were using it - the wooden handle pulled right out of the rubber plunger and wouldn’t stay in. The first night l, when Vanesa had already fallen asleep at about 9:45, I walked Maui outside to pee before I went to sleep…and while outside I heard gunshots just a couple blocks from the motel and figured I’d best go back inside (5 mins later I heard sirens, and the next day I learned 3 people had been shot). The second night, we were awakened by gunfire literally just outside the motel, probably at the Taco Bell right across the street. I called 911 but never heard any sirens and ended up going back to sleep. We had planned to leave before sunup but after the gunshots I did not feel comfortable leaving until after first light so we left around 630 am. We learned a lesson - never pay for two nights in advance until you’ve been in the room and feel it’s comfortable enough to rest in, and try to get a look at the room before paying (if you didn’t book online in advance). While we were in Pueblo we did walk on the morning of our rest day around the pretty riverwalk area, we saw a nice area of town with cool murals painted on many businesses’ walls, and we had coffee and a bagel at a cool little place called Solar Roast where we met an interesting dude named Elliot. Elliot was very extroverted and struck up a conversation which strayed toward his work in the mental health field and he ended up telling us about how he perceived our energies, said he saw something positive in us, and talked about how we could continue to have a strong relationship. This interaction with Elliot had the potential to go either way, annoyingly or pleasantly. It turned out to be very pleasant and we sat and chatted with to him for close to an hour and felt happy and energized after our time spent with him. What else? Oh, Pueblo has great Mexican food so I rode my bike over and got some great burritos at one shop on a stretch of avenue that had FOUR taquerias in a 2-block stretch! And we went to the bike shop the night we arrived and got some spare chamois butter and a new chain for V’s bike. Our chains have stretched/worn and need to be replaced so they don’t wear out our gears. When the bike shop didn’t have the right chain for my bike, I checked Amazon and found what I wanted for $21 with next-day delivery so I ordered it with the plan to install it myself before we left. It never came on our rest day, and Amazon emailed me apologizing; I just cancelled the order and got a refund. So we left the hotel around 7 am and were heading toward Florence, Cañon City, and Royal Gorge, hoping to reach the latter because I’d booked a grass tent site at the Royal Gorge KOA Campground. Joel, Bill, and Greg were also leaving (a different, and we’d learn later, nearly equally bad motel in) Pueblo that morning and we offered for them to join us at the KOA and split the $52 cost five ways and they accepted, but they rode a different route to Royal Gorge than we did because their Pueblo motel was several miles further north than ours and would have necessitated backtracking to join the actual Trans Am route. They rode US Hwy 50, which V and I wanted no part of after the awful ride INTO Pueblo on 50. So when we left I Google-mapped convenience stores along the route out of Pueblo and picked one at the edge of town we planned to stop at and fill our water bottles (the hotel sink was too shallow to fill them completely). Somehow I messed up the directions though and we left town and never saw it. It wasn’t a HUGE deal, but it was of minor concern because there was nowhere to fill water for 40 miles to Florence. The first 30 miles were harder than anticipated, climbing up hills out of Pueblo and it was getting hot, even though it was only in the upper 70’s and partly cloudy, because we were fully exposed with no shade. For the first time on this trip, as I recall, we stopped at a driveway of a house to ask if we may have our water bottles filled. I dismounted and V held my bike while I started walking onto their property (there was a woman watering her flowers outside, and a sign saying “SLOW, Children Playing”) with my arms overhead holding two water bottles in each hand, and yelling out loudly “may we please have some water?”. A dude appeared from the garage right by where the woman was watering plants and looked my way, I repeated my request and he made an aggressive motion with his hand like he was slitting his own throat. I stopped walking, no more than 30-40 feet down a 300-foot driveway. I yelled out “what? We can’t get water here?” and suddenly he jumped into a 4-wheeler and floored it, coming straight at me through a field, not bothering to go down the driveway. I stayed where I was and he got there and told me there was no potable water here (“you don’t want this well shit”), that this was a cannibis farm and the owners don’t like visitors, that they’ve had break-ins in the past, and that “we are heavily armed and shoot on sight”. Wow, the first time I ask for water I choose a heavily-guarded pot farm. Nice. So I just said ok and walked away and he got in his ATV and headed off toward the house. V and I mounted our bikes and started to ride off when we heard honking and the dude was coming directly at us again, full-speed in the ATV through the field, chasing after us. Honking repeatedly as he drove. He was waving us down and when he reached the edge of the field he got out of his vehicle and held up a half-empty 24-pack of bottled water and yelled out that he’d “found this in the garage and you can take all of it”. And he chucked the entire bag of bottles over the fence, which landed with a big thud halfway between the fence and the highway where we stood. He quickly sped off. We were kind of shocked but I guess even armed weed farmers have a heart too and don’t want to see a person die of dehydration. As we were unscrewing bottle after bottle to fill our bike water bottles (I think we used 6-7 of what he gave us), a black SUV pulled up out of nowhere on the highway, on the other side of the road, watching us for a minute, and then slowly driving past us at 5mph. A sketchy-looking dude inside said “you guys alright, need anything?” and we replied “no thanks” after which he drove off. We left the rest of the full water bottles, and the squished empties, inside the bag and right next to the white line on the side of the road so other cyclists going by might find this magic water surprise left for them on a hot day. After a long and gradual incline, we hit a 2-mile-ish climb up the side of a steep glacial moraine up to the tiny town of Wetmore. We stopped to have a snack and a rest on a bench at the Wetmore church and soon afterward the pastor showed up and kindly offered to unlock the church and let us inside for cold, filtered water and to use the bathroom! So our convenience store error and traveling with less water than we ideally would have fortunately worked out just fine. And we had enough from the start to not die or anything, but we no longer had ration our intake and we’re more comfortable. We were surprised by a long downhill toward Florence where we stopped to get the dog and ourselves wet and put on sunscreen and then we moved on toward Cañon City, 9 miles away. It was a trafficky, hot road with no shoulder so we were relieved to get to Cañon City where I could buy my bike chain (a call to a bike shop there revealed they had exactly what I needed) and we could get lunch and a cold drink. We headed to the Red Canyon Cycles bike shop, on a neat, historic Main Street, and discovered they also had coffee, microbrews, sandwiches, and pizza! The intent was to get my chain, install it myself (to save the $15 install fee) on the $36 dollar chain that’s only $21 on Amazon, and then get coffee and pizza from the shop afterward. So I walked in, held the door open for a guy with his arms full of stuff who passed through and didn’t even make eye contact let alone say thanks, and went up and purchased the chain. I asked the clerk if I could borrow their pliers so I could detach the old chain before installing the new one and he said “oh, I’ll have to ask the boss”. As it turns out the boss was right behind me walking back into the shop, the guy is held the door open for. The clerk tells him I asked to borrow the pliers and he turns to me and says “I don’t loan out my tools” with the most arrogant look you can imagine and then “you can pay us $15 to install the chain for you if you want”. I get being in business. I get not wanting someone to steal your tools. But this guy was just a complete dick, and for me wanting to borrow a pliers that I’d literally use for 3 seconds to squeeze my old chain to remove it. I told him “no thanks” and left. So this guy lost out on selling me $40 of coffee and pizza because he wanted to make $15 on a chain install. So V and I were outside deciding where to go eat (and I was going to use my own chain removal tool, more cumbersome and time-consuming than his chain-specific pliers would have been, and change the chain right outside his shop before we left) when he comes outside with two customers going to test ride bikes. I decided to tell him to that at bike shops all over Portland and multiple times on this trip, they have let me use a tool, both when I’ve bought something and when I haven’t, and that I’m really surprised by his reluctance. He doubled down on his “this is how I make my money and I’m not going to give you my tools to use” bit, and that “it’s a business, sorry”. I told him I understood his point but disagreed because I’d bought from him and paid a higher price than I could get the chain elsewhere; he replied that he makes nearly zero money on that chain and didn’t really mark up the price much beyond cost. I was about to tell him that because he didn’t let me use the tool he’d lost more in coffee and pizza sales than he’d have gained in chain installation revenue, and that his arrogant attitude was going to have me telling multiple other cyclists about my negative experience, when he just suddenly walked away. He came back 15 seconds later holding the pliers, walked past me and right over to my bike and took the 3 seconds to use his pliers to detach my chain, and then walked away. I thanked him sincerely as he walked off. And then V and I took the minute and a half to install my chain. And then we went across the street to eat. But, I did appreciate his gesture so I went back inside the shop and thanked him, shook his hand, and told him I’d let three other cyclists know about his shop (Joel, Bill, and Greg) and that they’d said stop if they needed anything on their way through town (turns out Joel did have some work done on his bike there). He said that after he’d denied me use of the tool, he’d talked to his shop clerk who’d said something that helped him decide to change his mind. While V and I are and had cold cokes across the street, Joel got his bike worked on and Bill and Greg saw us and came over for a chat, and then we all headed up the hill basically together (though they left before us and we passed them on the climb up to where we were headed, and V overheard them talking about how strong of riders that V and I are!). V and I got to the KOA first and we went to check in, and they laughed when I said I’d booked a grass tent pad site. It doesn’t exist there, grass, despite KOA.com booking tent sites on it. But they were cool and let me go around and see every site open and choose one that we liked best. We had a fun night camping with all five of us after Joel, Bill, and Greg rolled in, and we had an AMAZING view, and survived a big thunderstorm with heavy wind and rain (inside our tents, using our hands and feet to help the tent walls not cave in on us). V and I had our tortilla/beans/cheese roll ups for dinner and used the Tillamook sharp cheddar that should’ve cost $8 but that the kind KOA lady sold me for $3.19 because it didn’t have a price marked on it. And then we crashed. I crashed before V this time somehow, which is weird because she almost always goes to sleep first.