We'd saved a couple of slices of pizza from the night before's dinner so we'd have breakfast today. V ate both, I ate one and put the other in a ziploc bag and wedged it on top of my saddlebag between my flip flops for safekeeping while I rode. Yes, I strap a lot of shit to my saddle bag that doesn't fit IN the bike bags..flip flops, bottle of sunscreen, extra water/coke, a wet chamois that needs to dry in the sun, our GPS Spot Tracker, and a piece of pizza sometimes. The motel coffee was SO bad at the Chedsey Motel (but they had cool log bedframes!!) that we stopped at a coffee shop on the way out of town. They filled our water bottles (the Chedsey's sink was too shallow to let us get our water bottles under the faucet to completely fill them) and the water was filtered! It's so nice to get filtered water rather than old motel sink water in areas where the water isn't that good to begin with (boy do I miss Portland, Oregon water...we are so fortunate!). The owner and her daughter were so nice and the coffee was super delicious (and so hot it singed our tongues). The daughter was in a power wheelchair that she controlled with one foot and a joystick, and she was missing both arms and one leg. But she took our order with an iPad and used her chin to input the information. And when she brought the coffee to the table, she drove it out and had it held between her thighs for the customer to reach out and grab. Also, the coffee shop had a cool board on which people could write inspirational sayings to others, and there was an envelope on the board that had money it it and it said something like "take what you need" and "pay it forward". Again, more kindness out here. So, coffee finished, we lathered up in DEET and started riding. We expected mosquitos to be bad out in the fields, but somehow they weren't all that bad. Was it because we were wearing DEET or were there just fewer mozzys around? Who knows, but the ride was more pleasant. We were anticipating another ride with limited services, and we knew we had the choice of riding 49 miles to Riverside (where the first services were) and staying there, or 69 miles to Saratoga where we'd have more sleep and food options. About 15 miles outside of Walden, I was pleasantly surprised to see a new shop and RV park had opened up so I stopped and bought some snacks and drinks there; not only did I want to get more food/drink on board, but I want to support little shops out here so hopefully they stay open and future cyclists will have those options available to them as well. From there we rode through the last of Colorado and crossed into Wyoming (but there was NO "Welcome to Wyoming" sign....boooo, Wyoming!) and it was remote, desolate even, and really, really pretty. The weather was perfect, the wind was perfect, and it was one of my favorite Trans Am ride days. V and I rode separately for much of the early part of the day as she just wasn't feeling it like I was. But after we got over the main climb, we rejoined to ride the glorious downhill of 15 miles into Riverside together...and there was road construction the entire way. UGH!! There were MILES of grooved pavement that are murder on bike tires and make it really challenging to not crash, and then we hit the point where the flaggers had traffic stopped and we had to wait in a long line of cars and semis until the pilot car came to take us through. The pilot car came, and took us through; we were last because we didn't want to hold up the cars and trucks, but the damned flaggers didn't communicate to each other that there were cyclists in the group because at one point, the traffic had all gone far ahead of us, we were by ourselves, and then suddenly traffic was coming AT us. But we'd passed the workers that were doing the paving and to our right was an entire lane of brand new pavement (we were still riding on the grooved old pavement because we had no idea if the new pavement was still hot and would melt our tires). So we decided to try the new pavement so we were out of traffic's way; I bent over and felt the pavement with my hand and it didn't feel too hot, so we ended up moving over to the fresh stuff and we rode it all the way to Riverside, I'm guessing another 5 miles or so. V was ready to eat so we went into a cool, Western cafe and ordered some good food (veggie sandwich and tater tots for me, fish and chips for V) where the server was kind of a bitch. And she was a bitch even before I requested to substitute pickles for onions on my veggie sandwich and her reply was that I could have it with no onions but she'd have to charge me extra to put pickles on it. Whatever. But the food was good, and no I didn't get the pickles. We decided we had it in us to ride the 20 more miles to Saratoga. It was a pretty favorable decrease in elevation, not without uphills, but with a lot of slight declines and a nice tailwind. I got ahead of Vanesa because I was really moving and she ended up getting caught for a few minutes in a rainstorm that I had avoided; when we rendesvoused in Saratoga, she was wearing her GoreTex jacket and the dog basket was covered up. We were ready to get a room to avoid the mosquitos and the rainstorm that was coming, and we called a couple places and chose one right in town. As we were riding through town, however, one block before the hotel, a barefoot and tattooed dude came running out from a corner house yelling at us....it was Bill, our cycling companion that we'd camped with at KOA a few nights ago. He and Greg were already in town, had found a church hostel that just happened to be on that corner, and had just happened to be looking out the window toward the main street as we rolled by. He said the church hostel was great, had beds, had food/coffee, and was really clean and nice and that we should stay there. YES!!! So we did. We had to lock our bikes outside for the night with the others (with Bill, Greg, V, and me there ended up being 5 of us...another cool dude Rob showed up later, and he's doing the TransAm too but started in Astoria OR where we will finish), which was fine. I ate a pint of ice cream for dinner, cookies and cream flavor, while V walked across the street to the Family Dollar and got some pasta and sauce to cook, and maybe or maybe not a big package of Chips Ahoy too. I had a cookie for dessert. And then I ate a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios for a second dessert. Wow, bike touring gluttony. We chatted some with the other riders, comparing bike and touring stories good and bad, and then we headed up to bed, where V and I had a private room, with her in the queen-sized bed, and me on the floor on a 4-inch foam mattress. We had the windows open ("mountain air conditioning" again) and while that kept the room cool, it was also loud as the church is right on the main highway so I didn't sleep all that soundly. But tomorrow is only a 41-mile day to Rawlins, Wyoming, and doesn't have much elevation change, so I didn't need that much sleep, really. Thanks, Bill for running out to get us before we spend a hundred bucks at a motel. And thanks St. Barnabus Episcopal Church for providing such a generous hostel for cyclists' comfort!