Sunday June 23:  Pueblo, Colorado to Lamar, Colorado
Distance:  121 miles
Total time:  7 hours 34 minutes
Riding time:  6 hours 15 minutes

I don't expect I'll ever have another day on a bicycle like today.  First of all, I don't intend to ever ride 121 miles again.  Today's was the longest of our 47 rides.  But it was near-perfect.  The weather was sunny with a big blue sky; the temperature was in the 60s and 70s; the road was flatter than a pancake that you'd sat on for an hour; and miraculously, against all odds, we had a tailwind from start to finish.  We averaged almost 16 miles an hour including our stops, and almost 20 miles an hour during our riding time.  These are the moments when you think gosh, I'm a really good cyclist!  Until the next day, of course.  But today?  We were really good cyclists!

It was difficult to imagine when we set out what the day would be like.  We knew the road was long, and it was.

That's me in my lucky Irish jersey, following Jamie.  Michael took the picture.

But it wasn't all the luck of the Irish.  At 30 miles I got a flat and Mark, the expert mechanic (he's also a great rider) fixed it for me.  Thanks Mark.

As we were getting back on our bikes, Michael noticed that he also had a puncture.  So Mark fixed his as well.  Thanks Mark.

As we completed our 57th mile of the day, it marked 1500 miles cycled since we began in San Francisco on June 2.  We stopped for a celebratory selfie, and cycled on.

The town of La Junta is an important rail junction, and you can get the Amtrak heading east or west.  This mileage chart posted outside the station brought home to us how far we've come, and of course how far we have yet to travel.  Rye, New Hampshire isn't on the chart, but it's about 2300 miles from La Junta by our route.

Since today was such a long ride, we had three SAG (service and gear) stops rather than the usual two.  The third was in the town of Hasty.  I know westerners can have an ironic and subtle sense of humor, but there was nothing Hasty about that town.  As a matter of fact we didn't see a living soul, including at the Post Office.

When we arrive at the next hotel, the staff has always set up a welcome board with important information.  As you can see below, Mark the Mechanic will see customers at 5:00; the "route rap", in which we go over the next day's route, is at 5:30, and chow time is 6:00.  And according to the board we eat breakfast at 6:00 a.m. and we roll at 7:00.

Below the welcome board they always post this route map.  Maybe you can see the highlighted line that goes from San Francisco to New Hampshire,  and the yellow highlighted part that shows us our progress thus far.  It was disheartening to see for a week or so, but now it's pretty impressive.

So tomorrow we do it again.  We follow up today's 121 with a 103 mile day that will (finally) take us out of Colorado and into Kansas.  It'll be all about the wind.