Colorado Springs!

Today was another very special day on the Journey of Hope. After a day off, a short mileage day into Denver and another day off it was difficult to prepare ourselves for the ride this morning. Not having to pack up air mattress and sleeping bags certainly makes things easier in the morning, but I suppose we can't stay at a Marriot every night.

Today we had Bruce Rogers join us on the ride and several of his associates from KRG, our main sponsor for the Journey of Hope. Bruce is an incredible man and started the Journey of Hope in 1987 with his solo ride across the country.

A photo with the man himself

Todays ride was nothing short of disastorious however, we started on a bike trail that was a really neat ride out of the city, but it was poorly marked and led to some confusion on which way to go. We also had a 2000 ft. climb and a rack point of 73 miles by noon with a head wind that lead to a stressful day to say the least. We also managed to get lost and speed down a hill that we had to come back up once we were turned around. None the less we made it to our police escort at 12:30, a little late but we made it.

The ride out of Denver

Robbie and Kevin

On the road, traveled in force today!

Our police escort into the city was bigger then Denvers and also about a 10 mile escort because of the hairy roads into Colorado Springs. We were joined by Alison a 4 time Olympian who competes in skiing and cycling paralympics and was an amazing cyclist, you can see her in the circle up photo with an awesome prosthetic, but she cycles only using one leg and kicked our butts.

5-0

We arrived at the Olympic Training Center which was a real honor and treat to get to see. They prepared a huge lunch for us and we gorged on the buffett that was increbible. During lunch we had the privlege and honor of meeting Lopez Lomar a USA track & field olympian who was also the flag bearer at the 2008 Beijing olympics. He has an incredible back story and was one of the lost of Sudan, this has been one of the highlights of the trip for me.

At the rings

Our Amazing crew, they rock!

Lopez Lomar

After lunch we had a tour of the facility and got to see all of the gyms and meet some more athletes, Very Cool! We hopped back on our bikes and headed to lodging where we had dorm rooms on the Colorado College campus. We showered and walked down three houses to the home of the Dean of students who was kind enough to provide dinner for us. It was a great opportunity to sit down and talk with the Dean of students over a casual meal, he's an great guy and we truly enjoyed eating dinner with him. We had the rest of the evening off for errands, tomorrow's a big day as we head south to Pueblo and really begin to enter the plains. Colorado was beautiful while it lasted!!!