Yes Tour: 2nd Epilogue and summary of tasks

"Please Mr. Tow Truck driver, don't tow their cars."

Chelsey here wrapping up the Y.E.S. Tour
Statistics: (Tour total)

• Days it took us to miss our bikes: 3
• Miles: 1080+
• Days riding: 32
• River Miles: 54
• rock climbs: 108
• Slackline walks: too many to count
• Handstands: 1000's
• Sun- Salutations: 108
• Gallons of Milk: 20+ (Sam alone drank 15)
• Flat Tires: 33
• Workshops taught: 27
• Child patients visited: 24
• Serious crashes: 1
• New Friends: hundreds
  

Well, the tow truck driver was not at all into my charm, Jason's peaceful warrior approach or Sam's motion sickness. He must hear all sorts of excuses all of the time, but our story was very legit. Even the police were behind us. We went in with lifted hearts, (I even dedicated a round of back bends to him), but once we entered his domain, he had his walls up, including shades shielding his eyes. For towing our cars 2 and a half miles, he charged us $350. We talked him down from $500, which was the best he could offer us. He said "I know you guys are into all of that Charity stuff and all, but I have $20,000 rent every month. If I didn't have that I could charge you $25." He was surrounded by cars that he has towed and now owns because people just up and leave them. He tells us, as we are walking out to retrieve our stuff, that he is about to sell a BMW and a KIA, each worth about 10 times what our cars are worth. The entire time, he does not let us get a word in. We all have so much to say, but at the same time we feel sorry for this guy. Here we are, hearts open and fresh off of an amazing tour where we had the privilege of playing with so many amazing people. Here he is, owning a shell gas station and towing people for a living. The towing part is not so bad, but his actions tend to lead him to constantly dealing with unhappy people and he seemed to have a lifetime of walls up. We understand that he has to pay his employees and that he was just doing what the "guy with the gun" told him to do, but there was a certain disconnect. We were willing to pay all the hard costs of the tow, but to pay 10% of our donation money was heart breaking. We had to pay him the money in order to get our cars back. We are in the process of writing the Vail Daily to see if we can make this into a story (kinda a good cop/challenging towtruck driver kinda thing). The tow truck guy had also ripped Sam's car apart looking for drugs, and for someone like Sam (who lives in his car) it was quite invasive. We also gave him the chance to let this be a donation to The Beads of Courage, he could have used it as a tax write off, however, he was not into it. It certainly was a huge energetic challenge to let it all go, and to move on.

"I tried all of these faces... but none of them worked."

The good news is that we have our cars back. Many, many thanks goes out to the Vail Police for being so supportive and helpful. We also are very thankful for our friend Rachel who looks after us at our safehouse #44. She tried everything in her ability to help us out.
Aside from that, this tour couldn't have ended more perfectly. There is always a little twist at the end of our adventures, and lots of the time, it happens every day. We are quite used to it. The main thing is is that we are all healthy and in high spirits. We had an amazing time here in Colorado and are for sure going to come back again and again.. and again! To have been able to bring awareness to Yoga, Sustainability and Beads of Courage to so many communities was our main goal. I think we went well beyond that goal and even surprised our selves with what the outcome was. We were able to raise over $3,000 for Beads of Courage , do 108 climbs, 54 miles of river, do well over 108 handstands (I think I completed 108 in one afternoon alone), countless sun-salutations and thousands of walks across the slackline. We were on the road for 32 days and completed 1080 miles. Much to our surprise, we are eager to get back on the bikes and do another tour. We are thinking 10,080 miles across the country next time. We had many, many memorable experiences on this tour, so many in fact, I think we would have to make a whole separate website for it. However, to the best of our ability, here is a list of some that come to mind:

• Being able to be a part of bringing communities together.
• All of the amazing home stays.
• All of the offers to adopt us.
• Meeting the children at The Denver Children's Hospital
• Getting to pick out 2 entire outfits from Beckons Organics at Becky's house
• Having Glenn meet us on his bike in Pueblo
• Getting surprised with Marcee's connection to us through beads of her own.
• All of the amazing food that was cooked for us! (Anne and Pat, Katy and Keith, Becky, Stephanie, Amy and Caroline.. and many more!)
• Seeing our friends Adi, Ben and Rachel at the very end of our tour
• The amazing gear (Ibex bike shorts, Ergon grips, Pac Outdoors paniers, U-hydration, Eastern Essence food, etc)
  
• Having a guy stop twice to give us food and water.
• Getting inspired by so many amazing people
• Getting to the top of awesome passes.. and then getting to go down them at mach speeds!
• Being able to do this tour fully sustainably with some of my favorite people
• All of our spontaneous random slackline and handstand stops
• Sam's chocolate chip cookies
• Dan's dry sense of humor
• Tom's ability to ham it up for the camera
• Sam and Tom's russian acrobatic show
• Jason's motivation... (even if we didn't like it at the time)
• all of the yoga and rock climbing .. and slacklining.. and, and.. ok I should stop.

Thank you once again for all of your support and donations. We will continue to work with Beads of Courage for our adventure races and awareness tours. Lots of love, Team Yogaslackers


YogaSlackers YES Tour 2009 at SpotAdventures

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