Trail Ridge

Colorado was filled with some beautiful rides, however, there is one that stands out in particular. Our ride through Rocky Mountain National Park. We went over one of the highest paved roads in the world, an elevation of 12,183 feet. 

As always, it started out like any other morning. We woke up... rather I woke up, turned the lights on forcing everyone else to get up, got dressed, ate breakfast, did bike maintenance. I stress did bike maintenance because my back wheel had a little bit of a wobble in it. I wasn't sure what to do because this had never happened to me before. I remember thinking I might have to ride in the van today until I can get this fixed, but it was such a monumental day to ride. So I asked a couple of my friends who didn't know what to do, so I really started to look at it, tightened the hub, it seemed to do the trick, and called it a day. I was a little worried about it because in the second half of the day we were going to plummet down a mountain and if anything were to happen with my bike it could have ended catastrophically. Needless to say nothing happened. 

At route meeting, as we do every morning, we discuss the route and anything we should watch out for. This route meeting was a bit more intense. The leaders put the fear of God in us. I'm not sure if they meant to, but they acted as if this would be the hardest, scariest day of riding that we will ever do. They also told us that because we were riding through a national park that we would have to be on our best behavior. We also changed the route last minute so that freaked some people out as well. I didn't really mind that, I knew I'd find my way. 

Oh well, we were on our way. It was a bit chillier than usual but nothing we couldn't handle. About 6 miles in I was riding with Stephen and Kevin when we see Ross and Daniel coming back the other direction. We asked what was going on and they said, "Google Maps said it was this direction." Patrick who was just slightly in front of us turned and followed them blindly, along with everyone behind us. Stephen, Kevin and I didn't. I don't like to follow people blindly, as I've done that before and it just added miles to my trip. We looked it up on Google Maps only to find out that we were going the right direction. So we trekked on. Just shortly up the road we ran into an elk in someone's yard. Yes that's right, an Elk, just chilling on the side of the road. Of course we stopped to take a few pictures with him. It was insane how comfortable it was with us so close to it. 

Anyway, after a few shots, we left the beast alone to chomp on some more grass. Then we started making our way into the Rocky Mountain National Park. We were a little worried that we weren't going to be able to get in because Ross and Daniel had our permit. We gave it to them because they were in front and figured they would get to the gate first, but they were stupid and made everyone go the wrong way. It wasn't a problem, though. The park ranger was really nice, believed that we had a permit, and let us go. 

A few turns of the winding road and there it was... The Climb. Once it started it didn't stop. We made the best of it, though. We were going slow so there was plenty of time to talk. It was a really foggy day, which was a little disappointing because you couldn't see any of the magnificent views that were apparently out yonder. We stopped at one scenic overlook and all we saw was this... 

We climbed. Then we climbed. Oh, did I mention we climbed? We climbed for 25 miles! At one point the fog was so thick you couldn't see more than 15 feet in front of yourself. Finally, I don't know how far along we were but the clouds broke a little bit and we saw a mountain. We got so excited, we all stopped to take some pictures. Right around mile 30 we stopped to eat lunch. At this point we are roughly 11000 feet above sea level. It was cold. There were 5 or 6 of us that hopped in the van to get warm. I'm not one for stopping too long so I ate and ran. I was the first to the summit, 12183 feet of summit! In all honesty it was somewhat anticlimactic. There wasn't a marker or anything announcing that you were at the summit. You didn't know until you started going down the other side. 

On the other side there was a restaurant, an information center, a gift shop, and some bathrooms. I stopped to use the bathroom, got a hot chocolate, and just to relax a little more since I cut lunch so short. A nice chunk of the group caught up to me at this point. I waited for people because after I left it was going to be downhill for miles and I didn't particularly want to ride along on such a monumental even in our ride. After a few of us were ready we all rolled out together. I was in front of Tim, I chose this carefully because he had a GoPro and would be filming the descent. The ride down the mountain was incredible. It wasn't the steepest hill and I wasn't going the fastest I had ever gone, but for 10 miles I didn't have to pedal, I was able to coast the whole way down. There was switchback after glorious switchback that made for a fun and interesting descent. 

The rest of the ride was relatively uneventful. I saw a moose and it rained. 

The "high"lights of Colorado

I'm not even going to bother apologizing this time. I'm not sorry for not posting, I was biking across the country enjoying every second of the experience. I didn't want to take the time out of my day to blog. That being said, I'm going to write a few posts catching everybody up on the happenings from Colorado to the Oregon coast. 

I title this post 'The "high"lights of Colorado' not because I got high, but a vast majority of the team participated in recreational marijuana while we were there. I stress, I did not partake in the activity. Anyway, I remember being the first one to the Colorado border. It was the first really cool border crossing that we had seen. Two giant timber poles sticking out of the ground with two timber cross beams, and a giant wooden sign welcoming us to the state of Colorado. In no time we were up on the sign taking pictures, waiting for everyone else to get there. We were all taking turns getting on top of it, groups of 2-5 would be on it at once. After everyone got there, we took a group shot and carried on our way.

I'm not sure if I said this before, but I had certain expectations of Colorado, but eastern Colorado is nothing but the same cornfields, wheat fields, and other flat farmland. I can't remember how far we rode that day but the fields didn't end. I do remember we stayed just outside of Akron (Colorado not Ohio). We were 5 miles off of the main road and boy do I remember that road. Literally every 20 feet there was a crack in the road. Not just a crack that you drive over and don't think anything of it. A crack that went the entire way across the street, was 2 inches wide, and even dropped an inch or two. We felt every bump on our poor little bums. The church itself was literally in the middle of nowhere. I remember looking forward to looking at the starts but 1) it was too cloudy and 2) we decided to wake up at 4AM the next morning. The decision to wake up early caused a real scene that night. Some people just aren't morning people and they made that apparent with the 4AM wake-up announcement. I thought it made perfect sense. It had been extremely hot the last few days, was going to be the same temperature the next day, and we just crossed into Mountain Time, so to our bodies it would have felt like 5AM. 

I remember waking up before the sun was up. We always wake up early but rarely do we beat the sun. It was totally worth it, though. We were ready to ride when the sun was just above the horizon, it was a little chilly, but I would much rather be a little chilly in the morning that to be extremely hot in the afternoon. 

We had 100 miles into Denver that day and it was probably the easiest century I had done. We had 2 lunches that day and with that and the fact that we got up so early it felt like 2 different ride days. We were able to relax at lunch and take our time as opposed to pushing ourselves to beat the heat. We did run into a shower for all of 5 minutes. Just enough time to make me stop on the side of the road, put my phone in my bag, put on my raincoat, only to have to take it off 5 minutes later. 

We made it to Denver by early afternoon. There were 4 of us that decided that we would go to a bike shop before we went to the host. Therefore, we pulled out Google Maps and looked for the nearest bike shop. That is when Patrick got angry. I don't know what snapped, but he started to get furious and he took it out on Google Maps. According to him, "It's the worst," "It's only good by default because there's nothing better." I don't know about you but I personally love Google Maps and pretty much everything else Google related (no I'm not getting paid by Google). We found a bike shop, all bought new chains as the original ones were wearing out after 2000 miles. From the bike shop Chloe was going to go back to the host and Patrick, Taylor, and I were going to a hotel where Taylor's mom was going to be staying while we were Denver. However, Taylor screwed up put the hosts address in her phone and lead us there first. What started out as a short 100 miler turned into a long day.

Once we finally figured out where we were going, we navigated to the hotel, immediately showered and laid in a nice comfy bed, surrounded by pillows and watched TV. None of us had watched TV since we left for the trip. We had seen a movie or two while at the hosts but never did we have the chance to just flip through the channels... especially in a bed! 

We were in Denver for two days and a lot happened so I'm going to skim over it a bit. We had a build day the next day. We helped an older woman fix up her house. We did some painting, I installed a new front door, some insulation around the back door, a house number placard , and a few other miscellaneous items around the house. It was fun and the owner of the house was so thankful. That night, however, Chloe, Patrick, and I, on a whim, decided to go to the Zac Brown Band concert at Coors Field. We were going to try to scalp tickets but couldn't find any good prices. As we went to the ATM to get some money a gentleman noticed I had a Pittsburgh shirt on and asked if I was a Steelers fan, I looked at him with a dumb look on my face and said, "of course I'm a Steelers fan." Turns out he was from Western PA and was also a Steelers fan. His fiancee, however, was from Ohio and was a Browns fan. He admitted that he didn't know how it was going to work between them, but he said he loved her regardless. Anyway, they asked about our tan lines so of course we told them all about what we were doing. I went ahead and got my money out of the ATM while we were chatting and then one of the ladies of the group we were talking to proceeded to take money out as well. When she was done she turned to us and handed us $40 telling us that we were doing good work and to enjoy the concert, and that we did. Rather than scalping tickets, we just bought the cheapest tickets we could at the ticket office, which turned out to be the best seats ever. Sure they were far back from the stage but with the giant screens, you don't need to be that close. What we did have was the perfect view of the sunset over the Rocky Mountains. As the sun faded, being that it was Independence Day weekend, there were fireworks going off all over the place. There weren't fireworks at the concert, a little disappointing, but it didn't take away from the night. 

The next morning we left for Boulder. It was a short ride so we were going to get in early and I was hoping to see my friend Sam, but it turned out that he was going to be gone for his birthday / Independence Day weekend. The ride was uneventful but the evening was anything but. It was laundry day so I helped out with laundry even though it wasn't my chore that week, I went to church, we climbed a mountain, and saw a great firework show at the University of Colorado - Boulder football stadium. 

There's still more to Colorado but the Rocky Mountains deserve their own post.