 Whoo, I felt good about that one my friend Brandy's back yard. Good morning Brandy How's it going? So this is my friend Brandy And you've done the tour divide race We can talk about that later, but for now we have tea Brandy made me gingerbread spice tea, and now I'm excited for Christmas time. Who are you my friend? Who are you? You're so cute. You want to come with me? Mira's gone now, so we need a replacement. You want to go? Yeah That looks good. What is this? These are some mehams Brandy how often did you get breakfast like this when you raced raced to the vibe? I would say never Yeah, I pretty much Packed up got on the bike and started eating candy bar, so unfortunately that was That was the thing. It wouldn't inspired you to do the this route The route goes right past the house literally right down this Road here, so I'd see people coming through as I housed some of them that came through and Yeah, I just The image that comes to mind is really dirty dusty people with these the biggest bright white smiles ever And I was so intrigued by that like they came from Canada and they're so happy and Just really seemed really interesting to me of like what what's what's behind all that? And uh, yeah, yeah, so and you found out I found out. Yeah. Yeah What was your experience like? um The racing part of it was um much harder that I I guess anticipated in the sense that it um It's tough to be hurrying and not sleeping and Also trying to enjoy the whole experience at the same time But it was really fun also to push myself in that way like I hadn't Try to ride as much as I could every day for you know that many miles ever and So it was just it was just really different than my typical bike pack experience trying to race it And you did it in 25 days. This means you were going over 100 miles a day. Yeah average 110 And the last day because as you know, like southern New Mexico can get so hot I just um, I just went straight through for over 200 miles Which was just huge for me and rode it all night long, which I'd never done and it was About 6 a.m. Reaching the border was one of the craziest experiences of my whole life And you got third place for women third woman. That's pretty exciting. Wow. So that's the u.s. Canada border U.s. Mexico. Oh, that's the u.s. Mexico border That's you man. You look psyched that's six in the morning pretty Pretty psyched. I'm pretty psyched for breakfast. I haven't eaten anything that looks so good on this whole trip Usually it's junk food. Thank you so much brandy. This is absolutely incredible. Cheers to you And actually, you know where I'm headed today. Where where am I headed? You're gonna be heading up marshal up and over marshal pass, which is just gorgeous You're gonna have the best day out there Beautiful. Nice. Look at this guy. I'm pretty sure you want to go with me. Don't you? All right guys. Thank you so much This was so amazing and rio is great to meet you Dana Kevin john mira I'm all alone. I haven't been alone since the first three days of the trip Wow, it's kind of a weird feeling but i'm excited just to just to be out here with myself and my own thoughts head in south Thank you so much brandy and rio. That was wonderful And man, what a great town this is I'm excited to come back and explore a little bit more Man, it is a beautiful morning There is not one cloud in the sky. This is the colorado. I know and love And as always no crash ease no flat ease no whammies my body feels so refreshed and well fueled after that meal that brandy made me the one thing about this ride is that good food options are very rare I've been eating more junk food on this ride than any other bike tour ever There just isn't a lot out here. You know you hit a small town convenience store and it's candy bars and chips and soda and My body can only take that for so long whoo But i'm powered by kale and quinoa today like a good boulder hippie All right, i'm heading up marshall pass now and on my map i can see very tight squiggly lines and that always means you're either going up something steep or down something steep in this case we're going up you know it's steep and the cars aren't going much faster than you gaining out's too quick staying with other people especially close dear friends it's a chance to bond and go through hard things together and experience nature and beauty and rainstorms together and it really brings you together but i also love riding by myself it gives me a chance just to be with my thoughts completely and be completely present in the moment and just focus on my breathing and my pedaling and just look into the left and to the right listen into the leaves blow in the wind so cycling for me is a little bit everything and that's why i love it i love riding with buddies and i love riding alone but one of the problems of being on your own is you don't get to share your stupid jokes with anybody you have to make yourself laugh which is harder to do here's a tip when you're climbing a long pass get off your bike and check out the flowers it always grounds you all right i made it that was a great way to start the day a nice gradual uphill it was long i was riding uphill for like an hour and a half now i'm at about i think 10,850 feet top of marshall pass feels good feels really good and what feels even better is knowing that i'm going down for a long time this is kind of crazy i just popped out in a little town called sergeants and there are more campers here at rvs than i've ever seen in my life it is friday i guess everybody's heading out for the weekend us coloradans really like to get outside i guess but this is unbelievable this is sort of camp central for sure i'm not a huge fan of riding on highways but sometimes you got to do it to connect yourself to the beautiful dirt roads in the middle of nowhere whenever i hit one of these roads i pedal as fast as i can to get off of it highway god that was like 10 miles of highway a lot longer than i thought but now i'm going into the middle of nowhere it's my happy place check it out oh yeah you know what i love hate about wind it changes and right now i'm loving it because it's at my back blowing me down the road oh it's so nice after fighting headwinds all day it's like a gentle touch on my back just nudging me along come this way ryan you have places to go so i don't know exactly where i'm riding to today there's no town nearby so i'm just gonna ride until i feel like i'm good i've already ridden about 75 miles feel great and i'm gonna find myself a nice campsite and sleep under the stars right now right now is the most pleasant moment of the day so far this road is beautiful it is completely still no more wind and i just feel like i'm being hugged right now by the mountains this road's kind of narrow i feel safe sounds kind of weird but that's how i feel right now and i just ate an awesome cliff bar so that's always exciting little sugar rush the squiggly lines are back on my bike computer that means i'm going up that's all right good way to finish the day i'm feeling pretty strong about mile 85 right now user mira john kevin are you kidding me oh my god look at this campground and it says support for gdmbr specifically us they're in space one trail magic wow let's go check this out i don't quite know what i'm riding into but i saw a sign out there with my name on it hello are you kidding me ellen rose ryan van duzer nice to meet you brother i know you this is amazing yeah oh my gosh oh i don't wait to see your bike here it is here's me and my bike you've been waiting yes we have been waiting had you had you know i was coming because we watched by what do you mean had we know we watch all your videos we watched you in vaha we watched you and go from durango to moe oh man and we've watched you uh drive out you know ride around with dana we just watched you with everybody so we were when you said you were coming said where we're going oh this is amazing so that's why this really is amazing i can't believe it i've had a long hard day and here you are trail magic oh what do you have the all lecroy you are incredible because it was on sale well i love lecroy what else this keeps on getting better now they just handed me chips and salsa oh there you go hmm i'm so happy and they have two cute little doggies hi guys what are their names a patsy client is the white one bucko one says the black one bucko we're sorry we didn't meet him johnny cash after we realized he was the man in black oh yeah a patsy client she's like the best do you mind if i take one because i miss mirah take as much as you want if you want to sleep with one yeah i might have to sleep in my bed i have i have a question were you gonna camp here anyway or did you specifically come we came to see you you thought we were coming no we knew you were coming so we came to get you and we'd see everybody else i'm sorry everybody else isn't here no we came to see you okay good all right good yeah everybody else was a special bonus because we've come for three years and we've met so many wonderful people from the duty body yeah how many people have you served today sandwiches and stuff eight eight eight people yeah oh that's sandwiches uh treats water yeah everything and why do you do that because we love bikes and we love people and and we're retired and we can go camp all right i'm going to show you this really cool airstream trailer look at this and you have this awesome kitchen what are you making right now we got spaghetti and meatballs tonight oh baby yeah how long you've been riding bikes i don't know you know i started really riding training for brackbrite really in 13 okay my sister-in-law said i want to go do this thing and in iowa i go what that's what most people's responses so i went and it was the most fun thing ever yeah you you were constantly passing people and being passed all day long and smiling oh my god i met more people it's the weirdest thing it really is and it's so much fun alan you can sleep in my tent if you want i might do it i i i'm too old to sleep on the ground anymore oh what is that for later my friend oh that is what i'm talking about oh yeah and then you have like a little bathroom here a bathroom that's pretty cool look at this wow look at this this is so stylish they look kind of small from the outside but they're pretty big and this is your bedroom look at that oh and you have a shower and a shower no way look at that shower is cool and marshal loves that that i can take a shower to ride the bike yeah so you don't stank it up oh man and that concludes our tour of the airstream oh my dear lord look at that this is incredible thank you so much let's go to sunday sauce that is heavy too family style dinner in a campground in the middle of nowhere in the middle of nowhere life is beautiful this is a watch candy colorado alan what have you done yeah we're talking brownies you gotta have brownies look at that chocolate cherry with chili powder really in gunnison he's known as the pie man because he is he's famous in our town for making pies and people love his pies really what do you do with your pies you sell them you give them away give them away yeah eat them eat them is a problem good work good work my man yeah my family always had desserts always and that's that was the point of dinner i'm finally going to bed it was too fun to leave the company of alan and marsha they're such good people and what a finish to the day to see that sign with my name on it and just show up and they were ready with food and drinks and treats and these people have hearts of gold 100% they sat here all day and gave all the cyclists who came by a treat a sandwich you know just because they love it they love meeting people and they're cyclists themselves and they get inspired by seeing the riders out and i'm inspired by seeing them they are some of the best and this trail has really it's the best part of it is are the people that i've met along the way every day there's a surprise and today's surprise was one of the best for sure