Day Sixty Two: End of the Flatlands
Distance: 69 mi.
6AM: Return to Route 50 to battle light headwinds for ~32 miles, slipping in half the days allotted distance before the sun catches on and blanches the cattle-yards in relentless heat. Liz and I aghast at sight of thousands of cramped, miserable cattle packed into fetid pens of manure and dust, tranq’ed into a chemical haze, all vestiges of a natural or organic existence absconded. We cinch our buffs over our faces vainly attempting to de-stench the toxic headwinds and grind forward.
We stop into the Bunk House for a late breakfast and a water re-fill. Lizzie is finally able to eat real food, orders a breakfast sandwich and orange juice. I eat a breakfast burrito drowned in green chili, per the local style, it’s $4 and the width of a softball.
Baker-owner is delightfully friendly, though busy running a one woman shop; washes dishes while verbally considering a catering gig offered by a midaged woman with overalls and surprising spiked hair and tattoos; the catering gig is for the Las Animas class of 1966 high school reunion, I can’t imagine it will be well-attended…
Another thirty miles and the clime finally varies, we depart from 50 onto three miles of industrial approach roads into Pueblo. We’re relieved to see a more vital landscape, even if melancholic: rusted out steel manufactories and shuttered auto shops betray city outskirts’ broken dreams; determined to be outskirts and not veins of city bustle in the first place by contingencies now motionless.
We mark the location of a recommended bike shop for later repairs and bunker down at Solar Grounds for a recovery drink, coffee and other provisions. A fuzzed-out young stoner with Fat Mike hair punches the Square register about; he’s charming and generously friendly, points out the foods with the highest calories, parfair and cookies, which we gladly pay for and consume.
Lizzie wakes to a beeping phone, it’s Rob from Warm Showers who tells us “I’m outside waiting for ya.” We look up the address and scramble uptown so as to not keep Rob waiting, past stately turn-of-the-century brick homes and a few large hospitals. A man in tattered capris cutoffs waves from behind a pair of jewel-decorated mirrorshades — must be Rob! He shoves a large glass of sweet and icey strawberry drink at Lizzie, and an iced tea for me. His aluminum Specialized Tri-Cross is a wonderful apocolyptic menace, covered in hundreds of funky stickers, looks to have seen about 60,000 miles of hard riding, an estimate Rob figures to be more or less accurate.
Rob shows off his collection of touring gear, each battered artifact having been stitched, hemmed, taped, glued enough to serve as scenic props in a dystopian science fiction film. Running through his gear and hearing our stories about Kansas is too exciting for him so he asks “mind if I tour with you for a few days?” Yes, of course, so he vaults up and gives us hugs!
Rob prepares a hearty but somewhat elusive meal for us, consists of red and green peppers, noodles, sauce, later yoghurt to cut the spice; sniffing out dinner, Rob’s father bounds into the room, calls himself “The Bread Man” and contributes a large baguette before bursting with questions, most of which are interrupted by quirkish anecdotes about the very large two staircase house we find ourselves in, or the tourists they hosted last year. Bill is his name, he rifles thorugh twenty or thirty topics of discussion, opening each and closing out none; not tiresome because he’s so jubilant and charismatic.
Dinner closes out and we pile into Bill’s car to tour Pueblo by car at sunset. Bill was the CFO of the hospital for twenty five years, Pueblo’s hospitals being a major contributor to the economic livelihood of the small city; there’s a story behind every building, but Bill is no good at telling stories by himself, only instigates them before handing off to Rob, “Rob! Rob! What was the old jail called again? Rob! Who were the mobsters who laid low in that building?
Cross the Arkansas river and climb up a bank in the Northwest side of town, Bill wants to show us The Latkas, “We’ve got to see the Latkas, Rob, tell them about how you got the Latka’s son interested in touring!” Rob too coy to impart much detail,doesn’t matter cuz Bill’s now talking about a large chunk of rock propped up in a garden of concrete and metal sculptures.
Out of the car and Bill tresspasses stridently onto Latka Studios property, “Tom! Jean! Tom ya home?! Tom, if you’re there I’ve dropped by with two bike tourists!” Tom Latka steps reluctantly out of the house and greets Bill and Rob, waves hello and beckons us jedi-like into a tour of his sculpture gardens and the thousands of transformations and crafted objects he’s worked magic-like into the cliffs of Pueblo for twenty five years now.
Soon I’m swept into a hidden Ping Pong chamber in the back of Tom Latka’s studio, playing an intense game to eleven against Tom the artist warlord. We lower the score eight or nine times, eventually allowing the points to climb to 10 and I “lose” the match 11 — 13.
