4-09-08 The Middle of Nowhere

Today we got our wake up call at 7:00 AM Mountain Standard Time (MST) from Jennifer I believe.  I don’t quite remember because I was still half asleep.  So I pulled on a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, and went to breakfast.  The breakfast wasn’t nearly as great as yesterday’s, but it was okay, and free. Ally was the first to ride, and went for about an hour and fifteen minutes straight from the hotel.  Then Jeff and Sydney went for about an hour an a half from the spot Ally stopped.  Then Justin, Tim, and I went for another hour and a half from the point Jeff and Sydney stopped.  While we were riding, we went up these two giant hills that had to have gone up like 500 feet in elevation each.  About a mile after the second hill, we finally got a downhill.  It was awesome!  I got up to around forty mph according to the car driving with us.  Unfortunately Thomsen heard about it and chewed the driver out for letting me go that fast.   During all the rides we were surrounded with plateaus and mountains, with no houses or other roads anywhere in site.  Anyways, after Tim, Justin, and I were done riding Thomsen got on the bike for a couple of hours, too.  He said he'd rather ride all at once and be done with it so he usually rides for at least two hours. Once we picked him up we rode into the outskirts of Santa Fe, New Mexico.  We met the mayor and other city officials at Harvey’s Roadhouse.  While we were there we talked about some of the things Santa Fe was doing to keep the city clean, and more eco-friendly, and we told them about what we'd heard along the way from other cities.  It was a good conversation and at the end the media people interviewed most of us as well.  They also gave us a free lunch, which was delicious.  I had a grilled chicken sandwich with cheddar cheese, fries, and a vanilla soda.  After lunch we biked with a group of 50 or so bikers from Santa Fe to one of the city’s rivers to meet some kids helping to fix up rivers, creeks, and streams, so they can make Santa Fe a better place to live. It was really cool, we had a police and fire escort and it was fun riding with all those people.  One lady was over 80 years old and rode with an oxygen tank attached to her bike. As we started biking down it got very windy and cold.  About half way through our ride it started snowing!  It was snowing in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  Throughout the day the weather was fairly nice, but when we started biking into town it just turned nasty. When we finally reached the river we spoke with the kids about why they were doing this.  It was very interesting to hear what they had to say and I was very glad to have gone.  Right after the event we headed towards our hotel to thaw out, and hopefully a good night sleep.  When we arrived at the hotel I noticed a pool around back, and that it was steaming with warm water.   Thomsen was in the pool running laps because he cant swim and Paul and Jennifer were in there too, diving and swimming so I got changed and jumped in too.  It was really neat cause it was still snowing yet the water was really warm.