Before heading out for the day, we stopped at the Donut Ranch to fill up on what else, but donuts. On our way there, we ran into a couple from Iowa that we had met the night before. They were also heading to the Donut Ranch, so we invited them to sit down and eat with us. It wasn't until after breakfast when we were on the road that I realized we had forgotten to introduce ourselves properly and therefore I didn't find out their names. I did find out however, that they were both school teachers from Charles City, she a high school biology teacher, he a special education teacher, and were out touring the west for two weeks as part of their summer vacation. While Roger worked in the Minnesota state prison education system for 31 years, his master's degree was in special education, a discipline in which he taught in Pueblo, Colorado for several years before moving to Minnesota. Sharing a common passion, this subject became the main topic for our breakfast conversation.

"Don't the frustrations far outweigh the rewards? I mean how often do you just feel like your failing?" I asked in general to the table of teachers.

"The frustrations are definitely great," said the man from Iowa, "but every once in a while you get a student that really brightens your day. For the most part the kids are great, they just sometimes don't know any better, or just don't realize what they're doing is wrong. Many of the kid's parents are absent from their lives, so they've never been exposed to real discipline which makes it really hard to teach them sometimes. But I love what I do and they kids usually seem to respond to me. I'm not that big physically, so I don't think the kids are intimidated, which usually works in my favor. Of course, sometimes I need help, but as I said before most of the kids are great, you just need patience and persistance."

"And often times its the kids who you have the least faith in that appreciate you the most," jumped in his wife. "I mean we're always getting knocks on the door from past students who need help making decisions or just getting advice about things in life, years after they graduate. Some of these kids just have tough lives and nothing ever goes right for them. For some reason, they remember us and keep knocking on the door whenever they need help. Those are the times when you feel like what your doing really has some meaning."

Two glazed and one jelly donut later, Roger and I were back on the road heading to Colorado. The southern Wyoming landscape was much more intersting than central Wyoming's, but we were still eager to leave the state. The hot, arrid, vast expanses of sage brush were enough to make you question your sanity. After riding my bike across the west, pulling my trailer of 85 pounds, I have a new appreciation for the early pioneers and an empathy for them when I hear their journal entries about crossing the plains of Wyoming. It makes absolute sense to me, why when they finally reached Oregon, they thought they were in paradise. After months of only travelling 15 miles a day through the hot, dusty plains, they finally reached a land of lush valleys, stunning mountains, and pristine lakes and streams. I've only been riding through Wyoming for a week, averaging about 80 miles a day and I'm fantasizing about Kansas, I can only imagine what the people on those early wagon trains fantasized about.

As we approached the border of Colorado, the sun overhead was stiffling. A strong crosswind blew, making it difficult to ride in a straight line. Wyoming was doing it's best to make sure we remembered our last few miles on its roadways before we crossed into the promised land of its southern neighbor. Ahead of us, almost directly above the state line was a string of clouds. The middle cumulus cloud, getting larger as we approached, was forming a tall, mushroom-shaped thunderhead. The closer we got, the larger and darker the cloud became, eventually consuming it's neighbors and tettering on eruption as we headed from the hot, sweltering sun of Wyoming to the storm clouds of Colorado.

As if on que, once we crossed the border of Colorado, the winds shifted from a crosswind to a tailwind and the skies began to open, drenching us with the cool, rainy nectar of the clouds. There was no need to stop and put on rain gear, the wetness felt too refreshing. While the rain only lasted a few minutes, it was enough to cool down our bodies and reenergize us for the remaining miles we needed to cover to reach Walden. Crossing the border of Colorado was indeed as sweet as we imagined.

Walden is one of those towns that no matter what street you're on, you're at the edge of town. Every street either stops dead at the edge of a ranch, turns a corner and becomes another street that stops dead at the edge of a ranch, or turns into a highway that runs to the next town 30 miles away. There's a couple of motels, a library, a brand new, grand, stone county courthouse, a museum, a hardware store, a gas station, two liquour stores, and a cafe. Roger and I stopped to have dinner at the cafe.

On our way into the cafe, we met up with another biker, heading west to east on a tour of the western states, named Willie Schmidt. He was a retired banker from Germany, spending 4 weeks exploring the Rockies. He was also heading to the cafe for dinner, so we invited him to join us. Willie spoke broken English with a very thick German accent, but since his English was much better than either Roger's or my German, we gladly tutored Willie with his grammar.

This was his 15th bike tour of the United States since 1985. When he first came to the states, he rode his bike by himself from San Francisco to Los Angeles along Rt. 1 and didn't know a single word of English. He said he picked up a few words along the way, but had to get along mostly by pointing to things and waving money around. While the scenery was beautiful, the experience was awful, but obviously not bad enough to deter him from doing it again. He has done that trip five more times since.