Day 35

Yeesh, I've been trying to get this thing started for the last 20 minutes but keep running into computer problems. Well here we go, day 35, Strong -> El Dorado! As Rick let you all know we camped out for the first time in a long time last night. It was nice to get back into the wild, especially since we got to have our first camp fire. The one downside to last night was that no one told us that when you put a wet tent into a bag and let it sit for a week, it stays wet! Of course we all figured we should have done something, but it was too late for "shouldas" and we ended up with a slightly moldy tent. We're letting her dry out now and we'll clean it the next time we get laundry facilities (hopefully tomorrow?). When it was time to go to sleep last night the fire was still going pretty good, so Ken and Andy decided they would sleep under the stars. I had a feeling the fire wouldn't last, and we wouldn't keep it up, so I opted to sleep in the tent. At about 3:30am Andy joined me, and some time around sunrise Ken took the final spot in our 3 man tent. Ken assured us all that he would have stayed out there all night had we had more firewood, I guess we'll never know.

We got moving around 7:45, back down 82 just like yesterday. The shoulder has been a dream these last few days, you really never know how important a good shoulder is until you run for 5+ hours a day with all your belongings in a cart. We moved at a pretty good pace all day, and we were all in very high spirits. Probably one of our favorite things to do on the road is make up scenarios that we know will never happen, and today was a big day of that. We talk about things like getting keys to cities, job offers, and a Rambler waiting for us in San Diego, who knows, some of them might happen. The day went by very quickly. We made it to the outside of El Dorado by 11:15, and got into the city itself by 11:40.

We poked around the city a little bit, checking out what it had to offer. We eventually decided it was time to get something to eat, and sat down at Laredos. We sat down and were greeted by a very friendly wait staff, and some delicious chips and salsa. As we dominated the chips and salsa we all agreed that we need to pick more places to eat that have complimentary chips and salsa. As we looked over the menu Andy asked our waitress if what we were thinking about getting was "a lot of food". She said yes, and that was all we had to hear. We all got different lunch deals which led to us getting free cheese dip which was definitely welcomed. You will never hear about us turning down free food. Our lunch came out and I was very excited. I've had a lot of weird stomach bugs lately, and my appetite really hasn't been what it used to be, but today it finally made a strong comeback!

After lunch we explored the city some more and worked on finding a place to stay for the night. As we walked around, we were contacted by the local newspaper who met up with us for a quick interview before we got on our way to the police station. The folks at the station had no place to put us for the night, but assured us they would find something. Eventually we got in touch with Sterling Claypoole. If something gets done in El Dorado, Sterling probably has a hand in it. This guy does everything! He works with the Police Department and Fire Department, teaches Psych at the community college, teaches a spinning class at the gym, is in charge of 2Fifty2, a youth ministry and still has time to bike 250+ miles a week. Sterling met up with us and we quickly hit it off. He told us about a good place to get dinner, and showed us around 2Fifty2, where we are staying for the night. This place is very cool. It has a kitchen area, computer center, restaurant type dining room, a game room with pool tables, ping pong tables, tons of places to sleep (couches), X-Box, Game Cube and PS2s. I was very very excited when I saw they had a copy of Star Wars: Battlefront. Of course it wasn't Battlefront II, and of course Lipsky wasn't here to play it with me, but it was still really cool. I made it my goal to beat it by the end of the night, and even though Hoth gave me some trouble I was able to end up victorious.

After all our running and all the games, we're all getting set to go to sleep. Tomorrow is probably going to be one of our toughest days. Not only is it one of our biggest days so far in terms of mileage, its looking to be the most miserable in terms of weather. Cold rain and a windchill of 25, isn't this why we left New York?! Of course we do have a light at the end of the tunnel. We'll be meeting up with the SAU Track team for dinner tomorrow night, which we're all very excited about. We rarely get to see people our age on this trip, and it will be especially nice since they'll all be runners. Hopefully we can get an early jump on tomorrow and run strong all day.

That's it for now, I love you all!
-Durkin