Sea-to-Sea NA Day 26 Today my team is on ‘sweep’ which means that we served dinner yesterday, breakfast this morning, load the gear truck and that a few of my group sweeps any slow riders in or in other words are the last on the road. Today a bunch of the hard riders went of tour and rode up an extra peak to 16,000 ft. When they depart from the set route they are basically on their own but before they got that far Tyler went down while the pace line slowed down and broke his collar bone. This is the worst injury so far and as a result of it he will not be able to ride any longer and will go home. The climb today was long, probably 30 km and we climbed about 2800 ft. The road had 2 lanes in our direction and there were not many trucks. The sky was overcast and temperature cool if anything all ideal for climbing. It was 8:40 before we left camp so it was a little warmer already than when the first riders set out at around 6:30, just as well since I forgot to take my jacket and would have been very cold at the top. For most of the climb I was able to use my second lowest gear or higher so it was not as steep as some others had been. Reaching the top at 11,300 ft was a little anticlimactic since there was not even an elevation sign. From the top, except for a few hills - one of which was serious – it was down hill for 100 km and a 6000 ft drop. It consisted of two main sections, one from the top dropping several thousand feet into a village where many of us stopped for a coffee and Danish. For this section I pretty well had the road to myself since George VK, our riding partner for the day had dropped over the edge a few minutes before us, I throttled our speed with the drag brake and by Rita sitting up straight with mouth open wide (yelling at the same time) as we entered the hairpin turns. This pattern of accelerating to 75-80 kph on the open straights and slowing for the hairpins repeated itself 5 or 6 times on the 15 km decent. We were about to pass George when he stopped to take a picture. I checked his tires as we flashed by to make sure he was all right. He joined us and others in the coffee shop a few minutes later. The second special section was through a canyon on a nice curvy road with a small river and rock wall on both sides. Here again I took full advantage of the whole lane with enough speed that the cars were not bothered. George was drafting in the wake of the Rumba and Rita leaned into the curves like a pro. Another local rider took advantage of the draft too. I was busy shooting pictures of the canyon and alternatively applying the hand brakes as we entered corner after corner for what might have been 20-30 minutes. A beautiful ride it was. As we entered the outskirts of Denver we passed by a CRC church and downed 3-4 glasses of water and Gator Aid before continuing the last 10 km of our 145 km ride to the local Christian School where we will spend two nights. As we entered the street it was a festive atmosphere, cheering and music, water and a small care package. Here we met up with old friends Joe, Margaret, Rita and Peter. The two ladies will start to ride in Denver and the men make their way back to Hamilton by car. They have kindly transported our single bikes to here and will take the tandem back home. We had a nice dinner, ice cream social and even free haircuts so far. Tomorrow promises to be another special day.