p2p

I got the email early in the week but couldn’t justify carving out a huge chunk of my day for the drive to golden to ride the pint to pint. It sounded like a great time though. There are several drinking establishments near or in between trails here in the springs, so the route options were numerous. I didn’t want it to be too easy, but then again some of the higher trails would still be a little snowy and probably kind of wet. What to do, what to do? I thought i had it all figured out when keith suggested we ride the falcon trail and watch the pre-game fly over. Army was in town, so the air show is usually a little better than average.

My ride to the rendezvous took me through u.p. and pulpit rock

Not a brewery, but good beer is served here.

We lined up a couple of hefe for the pre ride

About half way through the second pint we heard the jets warming up overhead so we finished our drinking and headed up the santa fe trail to the ice lake entrance. We calculated that we had burned a little more time drinking than we first thought so we opted to try a direct route on to stadium drive but got turned back by security. “No bikes allowed on base on game day.” We were given the option of taking the south exit or riding off the way we came in. Not a problem. We backtracked to one of the trails that comes out of the stables and worked our way to the falcon trail out of site of anyone who would care.

And the crowd goes wild

Once on the falcon trail we found a fairly steady stream of bike traffic poking holes in the “no bikes on game day” regulation. The only down side to the detour is we weren’t at ground zero for the fly over. Oh well, the weather was fantastic and our systems were primed with thick german beers. We stopped above the stadium for a bit and chatted with the guy from security forces for a bit about the game, the weather, and spending time in iraq. Apparently he hadn’t gotten the “no bikes” memo because he didn’t give a rat’s ass about our being on the trail.

Yes, the weather was as perfect as the warm autumn glow suggests

The curious rider, with a bit of time and effort, can find more than one way into and out of the academy. Keith suggested an alternate route to our final destination that would takes us on a series of seldom ridden foothills trails. It seemed to be the most direct route to the beer, and was to include some trails he discovered last fall.

Heading out

For someone who had not ridden at all in the previous month, i was biting off a lot. We gained elevation as we rode off the government lands, lost most of the elevation and then proceeded to climb above the high point on the falcon trail. Totally worth it. There i was riding new to me trail after living in this city for 9 years.

A vantage point i’d not enjoyed before today.

The other benefit to all that climbing is that it was all downhill to the beer on narrow, unmolested singletrack.

Thirsty horses can smell the beer from miles away. This makes them happy.

Like an oasis in the desert.

A seasonal saison tapped just prior to our arrival.

I have to thank kevin for the inspiration. A week ago i was sniveling may way through my first ride in over a month. Turns out i was uncorking a fairly big week with rides on 4 out of 7 days covering a fair bit of mileage. I’m not fit yet, but i’ve definitely reversed the backwards slide.

weakness leaving the body

Got out sunday for my first real dirt ride in over a month. I’m not counting bean fesst because, well, i was kind of hung over and didn’t ride very far. We figured that with the recent snow we needed to stay low so we rode from the west side through the garden and did the western half of the intemann trail starting on ruxton and down into red rocks. Not a whole lot of vertical, but the ride did involve quite a few some short, punchy climbs. My lack of cycling fitness was staring me in the face at the end of the ride. Hopefully we’ll have some good weather over the next couple of weeks before i head off on another trip.

After the ride the family headed over to ute for race #3 in the pprr fall series. The boy had a fantastic run. This was a 2.5 mile loop with a gritty climb about ¾ of the way through and he handled it like a veteran runner. Seems the longer the race the better he does.

The rest of the week has seen more fantastic weather. Did a nice lunch time spin at the afa on tuesday and a fantastic night ride at palmer and u.p. on thursday. Hoping the weather holds out for a couple of more good rides this weekend.

across manitou looking at williams

if you decide to ring the peak, you'll be hiking up this trail

just another nice stretch of trail in cos

STIL - ouch!

away and back

Just got back from an 18 day trip to the middle east. Qatar would not be my first choice if i were a tourist, but most of the cool persian places are less than accessible. We were working everyday anyway, so there wasn't any time for sight seeing.

Driving through Doha every day and living in a hotel for over two weeks left some some distinct impressions. Drivers in the middle east are among the worst. Even worse than the italians in rome and naples. Qatar was surprisingly cosmopolitan - lots of imported labor, but i ran across people from all points of europe as well as africa and australia. Sure they are a muslim country, but they appear to be very accepting of infidels. Lots of development in the city. They are sprawling like vegas or phoenix and have gotten creative and haul earth out into the gulf to make posh little expansions for sky scrapers and shopping. Progressive architecture and a very cool skyline. Camels. Hot. Dusty.

Of course i came home and promptly came down with a bit of a cold. I managed one short ride and really felt the effects of over two weeks at sea level without riding my bike. Looking forward to the weekend. Velo swap and bean feSSt. The weather seems to be shaping up for a "classic" feSSt.

camels roamed the earth

view from the souq

souq architecture

souq alley

street view

museum of islamic art

camel truck

day time skyline

night time skyline

urban

I've spent the last few weekends catching up on yard work, automotive repairs, and household maintenance. It hasn't left any time for epic riding but i've been squeezing in shorter rides throughout the week and even managed a nice single speed sunday ride last week. The rides are shorter and closer to home but they've been at places like buffalo creek (tits), monument, palmer, and the rampart points of entry. Of course last week's funky weather had us channeling our thursday night riding ambitions into beer drinking. Turns out we are pretty good at that.

Saturday looked good for a ride, but after taking the kids to the zoo and running errands i didn't have time to hit the road, so i did a u.p. / ute valley loop from the house. This is a fun ride with a couple of different start options from my neighborhood. I'm shoving the photos and narrative in here old style.

This bookend follows the neighborhood ditch between flintridge and austin bluffs

The intersection of ditches. I learned several years ago to avoid the green sections - the slime will take you down. Much steeper and bigger than it looks. Maybe the tire tracks give it some scale.

That's the new shopping center on north nevada in the background. I admit that this part of town looks much better paved over. There used to be a rather spooky strip of crack motels here

Body anglish

18 months later and the hairshirt is almost exactly how i want it

Ute is a hard, rocky place

Monument creek. We use this to send our sewage down to pueblo

Bookended with an asphalt finish into the hood

mild sauce

I’ll admit that for the past two summers the thursday night shop ride hasn’t always lived up to the reputation it had earned over the previous years. There have been a couple injuries that have slowed some of us down at times and overall the riding volume has dropped off a tick for most of us. The killer instinct has gone into hibernation. We’ve gotten lazy.

Well, the spark is returning, and even if it is a feeble spark, it holds promise. Take last thursday as an example. I suggested the catamount loop, which was seconded by the whasian with the addition of the horse shoe. I won’t name names, but someone actually complained that we’d be descending hs in the dark. It was sad. We had actually come to the point where some of us were afraid of riding teller county trails in the dark. Fortunately the argument didn’t gain any traction. We bs’d our way up hwy 24 and edlow road. The no go view was floated a few more times but 3 of showed our solidarity by ignoring it.

As we hit our first descent back down to the res, the sun finally peaked out of the clouds before setting for good. Afternoon light on the north slop of pikes peak is always a treat. We made good time around the reservoir and hit our last descent just a full darkness fell. To reinforce how complacent we’ve become, three out of the four of us had light issues. I had suggested stopping at the dam (while it was still light out) to get everything sorted, but i was ignored as repayment for my endorsement of the extended loop. We bushwhacked our way to the trail and arrived just as it started to get really black in the woods. Two of the crew hadn’t tried fitting their lights to their new, over sized bars, so some cluster fucking ensued to get the mounts to fit. Once that was taken care of, one freshly charged (but not tested since last fall) hid failed to ignite. Once we got rolling we were in for a blissful descent. That trail is so much different in the dark, even more so since this was my first ride on it this year.

Once back at the shop one of the local riders pulled into the parking lot and told us he had seen our lights from the highway and watched our descent. I always wondered how noticeable we were.

icing

I’ve had a great summer riding season. I did all the big rides i had planned and even a couple i didn’t plan on doing. I’m going to skip the cb classic this year mainly because by late september my willingness to suffer takes a back seat to getting out there and enjoying myself. To this end, we hit up a new favorite this past saturday, riding from copper mountain to minturn via the CT to camp hale and shrine pass to bowman’s cut off and two elks. In the past we used resolution road and wilder gulch, but figured we’d try shrine pass for something different. It worked out well. The climb is much more palatable and it has the added bonus of a stop in red cliff where there is a fully stocked market.

We had been watching the weather closely, and it looked like we were going to get some rain and maybe snow but it wasn’t enough of a threat to make us call the ride. Sure enough, as we got near copper there was some moisture in the air. The weather was mixed bag for our ride. A little bit of rain/sunshine mix on the way to janet’s cabin, full on snow storm over searle pass, clearing skies from kokomo to red cliff and up shrine pass, rain and hail in the middle of two elks, and finally, a full on deluge just as we got back to the car and started changing back into street clothes. Fortunately we didn’t have any lightening while we were up high.

The riding experience on this route is top notch colorado stuff. Great trails and scenery and neat history if you know where to look. The descents are long too, losing multiple thousands of feet at a time. The buff stuff is great, but there are some steep, rocky/rooty sections where trying to keep up with everyone their full squish bikes was definitely too much on my fully rigid setup. It definitely kept me on my toes. The final descent from the ski area along the creek is one of my favorites. It isn’t so steep, but it has plenty of techy moves that were made a bit more interesting by the wet. We ended up with about 53 and almost 8000 feet of climbing for the day.

As we drove home later that night, we ran into some serious weather coming down from the tunnel on i-70. I couldn’t help but think of my friends who were lining up for the VT 125. It turned out the weather down south was pretty much the same and caused a two-hour delay and resulted in a fair number of non starts and drops at the first aid station. That’s colorado for you.

big tree, little bugs

Continuing my trend of not planning any big rides, or really planning any rides at all, i threw my bike on the car this morning for a rendezvous in castle rock to complete a craigs list transaction (not that kind of transaction). I figured i'd see what was up at indian creek if i felt like riding. I have not been up there since my beat down last year.

I did the indian creek > waterton > ct > indian creek loop. Good stuff, but the climb back to to the trailhead from lenny's rest sucked just as much as i remembered. I think i have an aversion to that trail because of how badly i was suffering last year. Anyways, it was a good ride. Lot's of good singletrack and excellent weather. I noticed the HUGE fir tree this year. You don't often find them this big near the populated parts of colorado because the pioneers and miners were really good at cutting shit down back in the day. I also found the blue beetles feasting on a chunky fungus growing on a ponderosa. It was icky and cool at the same time.

cb

We finally made our pilgrimage to cb. I wasn’t really in this trip for the riding which actually made for a much more relaxing time. The only hiccup was the dang fire. I stock up on firewood in town and the batch of oak i picked up only burned once there was substantial amount of heat to get it going. Kids don’t like waiting for their s’mores.

Saturday i took the boy out for a ride on strand. He liked everything except for the ride back into town. Sunday i did a short ride from our cement creek camp to hit some of the single track off of the walrod trailhead. It is really good stuff that doesn’t see much traffic and is easy to knock out in under 2 hours. We followed that up with a geocache hike. The rest of our time was spent walking around town, drinking coffee and picnicking in the park.

just not that in to you

Quite moping. You saw your action slow down after the enduro, but that was to be expected with the work trip and all. Things looked promising after that though. A good pre work ride at the academy and two consecutive thursday night rides. The short rides with the boy don’t really count because you were never really allowed to open up and run. Then the full on drought hit. No riding on the weekend? What’s up with that? To add insult to injury you were relegated to multiple liquor store runs and a commute to buy running shoes. RUNNING SHOES!?! Did i even notice you had been out of circulation so long that your tires needed quite a bit of air? Now you hang there watching me wash my car, paint bookshelves, and fondle those damnable tele skis all the while popping open beers and drinking my days and evenings away.

Chris Duarte

We had the opportunity to see Chris and his trio play last night here in the Springs. I highly recommend catching one of his shows if you have the chance. Even if you don't think you are a texas style blues fan, this cat has some impressive axe craft and is a super nice guy to boot. I could get all creative with superlatives, but i'll keep it simple. We were blown away. The new and improved Stargazer's is a great venue too.

Enduro v.4

Good times. Thought about a long write up, but i think i'll keep it short. I had my best/funnest ride this year out of my four attempts. I was slower than i thought i'd be by about 10 minutes which is kind of weird because i didn't stop except to take on some water. I also rode everything except the mandatory hike a bike bits between 4 and 5 and a couple of spots on the headquarters climb. I also had enough once i got to the bottom of headquarters that i was able to ride it like i meant it rather than trying to survive the last few miles and wishing the race was over already.

I also have to thank rebecca and the kids for coming out and handing off bottles and ringing the cow bells.