Member LiMoDad wrote to tell us that Warmshowers member Dave Blumenthal died Thursday morning while racing the Tour Divide mountain bike race along the Great Divide route. Dave, of Montpelier VT, had a head on collision with a truck in Colorado. He is survived by his wife and 3 year old daughter. You may want to read one of the many fond obituaries of him all over the web, for example, http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/BT/20100625/NEWS/100629981/0/WW2.

We join Dave's family in their grief.

Member Don Dejong sent us this nice article about host Liz Rogers which was published in the Marfa, Texas, USA, Big Bend Sentinel. It's reprinted here by permission of the author, Lonn Taylor. It sounds like Liz is quite a marvelous host. Thanks for your gift to the community, Liz!

By LONN TAYLOR

Liz Rogers of Alpine may be the most hospitable person in the Big Bend. Over the past four months she has entertained 30 house guests. All of them have been complete strangers, and all of them have arrived at her house on bicycles. Rogers, a lawyer who is a public defender for the federal court system, is part of a network of hosts all over the country who provide overnight housing for transcontinental bicyclists. She told me that when she first started opening her house to them her friends all told her that she was going to be murdered in her sleep or at least wake up to find her house looted. “Oh, sure,” she says she told them, “someone on a bicycle is going to steal my piano?” She says that her overnight visitors have been “almost 100% delightful.”

Rogers, who is six feet tall and has a deep, smoky voice that sounds a little like Talluhlah Bankhead’s, is someone who appears to be delighted by most things that happen to her. She has a finely honed sense of humor and once arrived at a Miss America contest-watching party that my wife was giving seated on the folded-down top of her boyfriend’s 1963 Pontiac Catalina convertible dressed in a bathing suit and wearing a ribbon that said “Miss Montell.” She is from the town of Montell in Uvalde County, which has a population of 20. She has more friends than anyone I have ever known.