Extremes

If you keep the forecast the same every day for long enough, eventually you will get the weather predicted. On Friday evening, the torrential downpour from a slow moving thunderstorm finally hit Denver proper. Pinkerton and I had hit the park a little earlier in the evening, but it didn't look like the weather was any different than every other day of the week so far. Fortunately I didn't ride over to the Cherry Cricket when it was time for food. Lots of people got wet, very, very wet. It even rained in the Cricket a little bit, through the duct work, encouraging us to get to know our neighbors. When the rain stopped, we scattered, with an early departure slated for Saturday morning, getting some sleep seemed like a good idea.

Up at 5:00 to take Dempsey for his morning walk and game of fetch, I caught most of the sunrise and noticed the unusually muggy air. I have truly gotten soft since leaving the high humidity of the South. Part of my morning prep was the first snack of the day:


Getting on the road just after 6:00 made for a quiet ride out of town. I saw a squirrel fall out of a tree, saw some birds flying around, and saw one other rider by the time I got to Lookout. Heading over to Evergreen Parkway, it was clear the clouds were heavy on the horizon, I was just hoping that my timing would keep me out of any afternoon thunderstorms.

I had a nice, easy spin up to the top of Squaw Pass, again only seeing one other rider, it was a quiet climb, just me, some tunes, a 10-point buck nibbling on roadside grasses, and the breezes. I paused at the top to eat half of my peanut butter and nutella sandwich, put on the arm warmers, and get a quick shot of the view. On the descent I saw the masses, finally awake and out for a ride.


When I got to Idaho Springs, I found out there was a half marathon going on from Georgetown to Idaho Springs. The frontage road was free of car traffic, but I was riding upstream in a river of runners. It had to have been an easy on by way of half marathons, being mostly downhill with a tailwind. I stopped in Downieville to get some more water and decided at that time to change the GPSed settings on the phone to only upload my current position every 30 minutes in the hopes of saving battery life. Unfortunately it ended the track so I had to start a new one and splice the two together later.

I'm pretty sure I blocked out a number of things from my previous trip to Vail by bicycle, one of them being the fact that the climbing is pretty unrelenting from Georgetown on. The frontage road from Silverplume to Bakerville is very scenic, set back from the highway, back in the trees. Unfortunately the stretch from Bakerville to Loveland Pass is all on the shoulder of I-70. I paused before heading up Loveland Pass to eat the second half of my sandwich and then climbed the pass very slowly. Riding alone was much harder both mentally and physically than riding with Kendall and Brenner last year, there was no where to hide from the wind, ever and nobody to talk to.

At the top of Loveland Pass, the clouds looked a little bit more threatening in all directions. After climbing steadily from Idaho Springs on, I was ready for a nice long descent on US 6. I think I saw two cars on the way down.


I stopped again in Keystone for some food and beverage, checked in with my mom and my sister to see what the weather was in Vail. The forecast from up the road was variably cloudy but no precipitation, yet.

The ride from Keystone over Swan Mountain isn't too much of a climb, but it didn't feel so good. It started to rain once I got past Frisco and didn't really let up until I got to Copper. There were tons of people on the bike path riding with their heads down, getting soaked, trying to get wherever they were going as quickly as possible. I kept plodding past Copper, feeling slightly better as I started to climb Vail Pass, knowing the end was just "over the next hill" . . . It started to rain harder at the top of Vail Pass, and didn't stop until I got to Vail, showered, changed and headed out to wander around town a little bit.


The map links to the details of the ride, but it was about 130 miles and a hair over 14,000' of climbing in about eight hours of ride time. According to the calorie counter function on MapMyRide, it was a 7400 calorie kind of day.

I woke up the next morning to cold, gray, and wet weather. I scrapped all thoughts of riding back and headed out instead for a ride towards Leadville. You can see the details here, I recommend installing the Google Earth plugin for your browser for full effect. It was 30 miles with about 3300' of climbing, which was good enough for me, I got back to town just in time for the rain to really start coming down. Deb was nice enough to sign me up for a massage for later in the morning. Seemed like a reasonable way to end my brief stay in Vail and the weekend (ignoring the whole traffic on I-70 thing).