Every fall at the impending change in seasons, I tend to stay away from the bike. Got that bug again this year, and a bummer beacause its been too warm here for November.
For instance, here’s Winter park on November 1st. Shorts, shortsleeves, 10,000 feet.
Followed the next weekend with Heil ranch. Lower elevation, pretty much same conditions.
On Saturday, before the big fall ride, I got out and rode one of the new trails accessible from home. Flatirons Vista opened, and while its certainly a better option than riding the gravel road out there, it could have been so much better if just a bit better thought out and executed.
The new Doudy reroute, however, is steller. Well thought out and executed, and a hoot to ride. Once I get my light back from the Redstone crew going to Moab, I’ll have to get out and take advantage of it.
Here’s what the GPS caught on the area.
Here’s the new trail. Point A to Point B. At least it gets us there, right?
And here’s the Doudy reroute. Flowy, fun.
Yeah, that’s it. Just a little track through the woods. If little’s 38 miles. Sure, I took the easy route, but I also didn’t have to retrieve a car at the top after dark. On a school night. Dave at Redstone put it all together.
Chad, in a rare moment when he’s not handing out beers.
And Todd riding a little bit of singletrack. We had a little bit to ride, here and there.
On my $100 road bike. The irony is my cheapest bike is the one I’ve logged the most days and miles on over the summer.
Yeah, I’m lapsing a bit, so here’s the very short recap of a few rides over the last month.
Rocking Ron, rocking the Redstone Tuesday Night Ride. I made about a month ago now. Late in the daylight, rocking a flash and zoom motion, best of a technique I’ve been trying. I like it! Good ride too, above Jamestown. Good almost never ridden.
Somewhere I never seem to end up, and never know why. Golden Gate State Park. It’s 30 minutes away, and superb. Its not all like this picture – a lot of it is as technical as it gets. I like it all.
WInter Park. Rode with a good friend Brian who was in town from MN. Rode some trails you can see on the map, and a lot of trails that you cannot see on a map. We stopped to play on this rock, Brian took this picture of me.
Tire levers. Gotta have them. These are/were 10+ years old. I dug them out of my ride bag when my garage set went missing, and all those years of use came to an end. A clean snap to worthless. Bummer to see them go after so many tire changes.
Curt Gowdy. Not just a sportscaster, but a state park as well. It’s good. It’s big, when put together with all the other riding up near Laramie.
The neighbors are willing to trade beers for bike work. A six pack for a quick tire change and pedal swap…
OK!
A post over on MTBR hit the spot: http://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?p=4727185#post4727185
I’m glad to be commuting, and it has nothing to do with the $4 I save each time I ride. Some of it has to do with this article: http://www.sheldonbrown.com/bridgestone/1994/pages/13.htm Mostly though, commuting by bike makes me stronger physically and mentally. I hope I can keep up through the winter. Here’s what I added to the thread:
My bike(s) are mainly toys. Having more than one bike pretty much makes every other bike left in the garage a toy, right?
I was a huge commuter in college. In 4 years, I drove to class once. Since then, its varied a ton. When I worked and lived in Boulder, I’d ride to work nearly every day, and I was able to keep my Jeep parked for a week at a time quite a bit. Since then, I’ve been all over the place with commuting.
Some months, zero riding to work. This summer, its several times a week. While some of our co-workers initially thought we were doing it to save gas money, in reality, it’s a pure fitness and state of mind thing. The perfect example? Day care is right next to my wife’s work, it shares the same parking lot. So when she rides, I drive to her work to drop off the kid in baby jail (there’s no safe route there with the kiddie trailer), and then continue another couple miles down the road to my job.
We headed to Nederland for a quickie camping trip, just last night. This morning, we packed up and headed to a trailhead juat outside of the wilderness boundary. There’s far away parking, and there’s close in parking – the close in parking requires driving through puddles and a creekbed for a couple hundred yards – and it gets deep enough that the tailpipe on the jeep was burbling underwater. As soon as I’m committed in the first water fjord, I look to my left and see this lady:
Nice Moose, eh? First time I’ve seen one in this neck of the woods.
A bit over an hour in, we arrived at Lost Lake. Purty nice spot. The wife wants to backpack in here for a night.
Yesterday, I managed a bit of a bike ride from our campsite. A ran accross a couple groves of these – maybe 50 flowers in each. Stunning. No wonder its the Colorado state flower.
And yes, I did manage to ride some singletrack out there.
It was hot today. Not so much on my way to work at 7am, but certainly on my way home at 5. Damned hot. I took it easy on the way home, drank lots, and tried to enjoy the heat as much as possible. Which isn’t a ton, but worth something nonetheless.
I rode yesterday to work too, but it was just a plain old average July commute. Today was hot.
Oh, one other thing, I realize I’ve had more days in the last couple months on the $100 road bike than any other ride. What a bummer, and a deal at the same time.
I did the second half of the Firecracker 50 again. I was nervous waiting, watching folks finish their first lap. Once out on the initial climb up Boreas, I was nervous. I could feel the day before’s ride in my legs, and the climb went on and on. Eventually, I fell into a good pace, but by the last aide station I knew I had made a big mistake.
I’d been going too slow all day.
I picked up the pace for the last 6 miles, and eventually ended the race about 10 minutes faster than last year – and I had a ton left in the tank where last year I was a wreck.
Years of riding (and racing) and I’m still learning.