Team America! (July 4th Post)

Happy Birthday America. On this day several hundred years ago men fought for their lives to protect this country, and now we get to bike across it. And, as Apu from the Simpsons stated, "celebrate the independence of your country by blowing up a small piece of it," as he handed Homer some fireworks--this sort of sums up our day in a metaphorical sort of way.

We slept in (until 7:30!!!) and lazily walked around in a daze wondering why no one was shivering from cold chamois cream on their shorts. Around 9 the team headed over to the Snell's house for some delicious pancakes, fruit, bacon and LAUNDRY (except the laundry wasn't so delicious)! Woot woot! Afterwards we headed back to Ascension Lutheran Church, where we were staying, and began the grueling and tedious process of cleaning. Except for Dani and Katherine, who "bought $9 reece's cups to give Chris to get out of cleaning our bicycles."

After some naps, reorganizing and grocery shopping we were shuttled into Kissing Camels developments to visit with Barbara and Jerry Keys...and their son, daughter in-law and grandchildren. The house was beautiful and we got to take a special visit to see the Garden of the Gods, which consisted of beautiful rock formations, which Nate took time to explain to us, as his Geology class (from KENTUCKY) visited last year. All we got from it was lots of rocks pushed up and did things to other rocks...and....yeah....now there's camels that kiss. Apparently they look like turtles, too.

Back at the Keys we had a barbecue that would have made Thomas Jefferson jealous and saw fireworks that would have made Washington cry. The Keys' house is located above the Garden, and so we got to see fireworks from about three different Colorado towns/cities. After the third one we were all sort of fireworked-out and caught our shuttles back to the church. We crashed around 10:30 and accidentally locked Ryan and Nate out for about half an hour as they went back to retrieve Nate's camera case. They tried calling Aaron to let them back in, but sleepily Aaron looked at his phone and remembered hitting the "ignore" button when confronted this morning. Who was the one to save them from the cold night of Colorado Springs? You'll have to guess.

I'll give you one hint...it's someone in the over-40/we-get-the-couches-and-cots crew.

So while watching all those fireworks I think we all sort of realized how beautiful this country is, how amazing it is that we can do what we're doing in it, and how much we want those joyful colors and moments of happiness to spread to those who can't see it.

Josh