CHEYENNE MOTEL

I was coming off a windy, hot 70+ mile day.  But with the inevitable comedy of errors, I arrived in Cheyenne, Wyoming during the biggest event of their year, the "Cheyenne Frontier Festival."  Bustin' broncos, bull-riding, calf-roping, clowns, and top tier entertainment including Jelly Roll and Machine Gun Kelly ensured a large attendance.  The town of 60,000 I'm guessing must have swelled to over 100,000 people.  So, where do you put 40,000 cowboys and visitors?  Well, they stay in motels.  And every single hotel and motel and every spot in the rv campgrounds was jammed.  Not to worry, I thought,  I'll just GPS the way to my motel.  The sweet voice said, "your destination is 268 miles from here."  Really?  Five miles maybe.  So, I checked my booking agent email again.  "Your room is waiting for you at Cheyenne Wells, Wyoming."  Cheyenne Wells?  Gulp!  Sure enough, my non-refundable room was indeed waiting for me two hundred and sixty-eight miles away.  

Frantically, I googled hotels/motels in Cheyenne.  "Sold out."   Upper tier hotels were charging anywhere from $500 to $1200 per night, per room.  Things didn't look good.   At last, the concierge behind the long desk in the lobby of a motel that was full, offered to search for lodging.  "Okay, there are two rooms left at the Cheyenne . . ."  So, I set punched in the name of the motel on my GPS and pedaled across town.  As I was checking in, the manager said, "Oh, I'm sorry.  But you're not booked here!"  What?  You've got to be kidding.  "This is Cheyenne Inn and you want to go to Cheyenne Motel.  It's on the other side of town."   He could just as well as said, "It's on the other side of the tracks."  

Cheyenne Motel is a rundown seedy motel.  It sits across the street from a storefront that shouts in blazing red letters, MASSAGE with a phone number below it.  Well, I was sore in my muscles, but not that sore, I decided.  Several beat up cars and a truck or two had their hoods up and the owners were working on their engines.  Every once in awhile an engine would rev loudly as if the pedal was floored.

My room measured 8 x 15.  That's okay except when you have to house your long ebike and store your trailer inside.  I now empathize with sardines.   At about 6 pm, little Meh-hee-ko came to life outside my door.  About seven migrant workers who call the Cheyenne Motel home had finished another week.    These undocumenteds are  cheap labor for Microsoft.  So every week they gather with their two boxes of beer--Modelos, of course--and crank their boom box to double fortissimo and enjoy their Mexican music.  (It does sounds to me like a Spanish variation of Polish polkas with that tuba in the background, only really LOUD.)   Eventually, the music stopped around midnight, the beer downed, and the laughter fading.  

Still, we began to engage one another.  I teased them a bit, though most didn't speak English, and they gave me a beer.  And when I couldn't get the cap off, they thought that was the funniest thing they'd ever seen.  Gringo can't even open a bottle of beer.  Hah, hah, hah.  But that started a bit deeper relationship.  I'm coming out the door of my cave next morning when I hear, "Hey, amigo, let meee ride your bike."  I looked at him doubtfully and and he quickly confirmed that he had never ridden a bicycle.  "I was teeeezing."  Touché.  So, we continued to talk and laugh together.  And then I told Jesse, Jose, and Antonio that I was a priest and how could I pray for them?  It grew quiet.  Jose was first.  I have familie in Georgia; a wife and keeds.  And I away four months.  Please pray for them."  Turns out that the other two were blood-related.  Antonio was the father of Jesse.  A father and son.  A son who will know to do nothing else but sit in the Cheyenne Motels of this world drinking beer and playing his Mexican music.  What a life.  These two don't even have a street address.  They just follow the construction jobs.

So, maybe in the end, all of the broken plays of this weekend happened to bring me to the Cheyenne Motel because Someone wanted me to be there.  Because some one loves all the children of the world.    So, that's my assignment for this week.  I will pray for my friends, Jose, Jesse, and Antonio.  What's your assignment?