TELLuride... Well I'll TELL you what!

June 24, 2008

Well plans change and change they do, My initial plan was to head to Boulder for just the day then make my way to Vail to visit Dan and Katie, However I never made it to Vail that evening and Boulder was just calling me. Turns out Boulder, home of the University of Colorado is just a hop skip and a jump from Denver so the ride was pretty quick and easy. However before I could depart I had to make a stop at the local Kawa dealer to give Mav some much needed TLC. Lately when I had been shifting from first to second I would hear a knocking sound and it was making me a little concerned, I suspected that with all the hard riding I had been doing I had stretched out my chain a little and I would need to tighten it up, a simple task none the less as described in the manual. Well that simple task took all of an hour and a half! Luckily there was a motorcycle safety class going on in the parking lot adjacent to the dealership and the instructors saw my distress and they offered any assistance I needed, which basically was some bigger tools. So with new tools and a shady spot next to the service garage I continued to work my magic with Mav. Around noonish I got on the road and I headed to Golden Colorado home of Coors Brewing for a free tour and some more delicious free samples! But much to my surprise they were not offering tours and I was bummed, no booze and no tour. Onward I move, I make my way further north up awesome hwy 72 to Boulder. On my arrival my hunger pains were too much so I go to the first burger place I could find, The Sink which is on ‘The Hill’ in Boulder. I get a bacon cheese buffalo burger and one of their micro brews…. Mmmm good just want I needed after an arduous morning working on Mav. Now Boulder is a fun town, I really enjoy visiting college campuses on this trip and mountain towns and well Boulder is both of those! It was also a welcomed relief to see more motorcyclists in Boulder, I saw more dual sports loaded down for some adventure akin to mine than any other place I’d been in the US. I walked all over boulder, from the campus to the downtown mall on Pearl street which oddly enough is exactly like the downtown mall in Charlottesville. On my walk I also got a gigantic bowl which I can’t remember the name of it but it’s basically a smoothie you eat with a spoon from a bowl, I saw a lot of people walking around with them and they looked so good I had to stop, another $6 well spent. So more walking and exploring and dodging of the bicycles. If you’ve never been to Boulder you should know that it is such a crazy bicycle friendly town. So there are lanes for cars, then a lane for walking then two lanes for bikes, and everyone rides. It’s a shame more US towns don’t follow in Boulder’s footsteps because their bicycling facilities and parks are really top notch. At this point I realized that I would not be making it to Vail for the evening so I checked into the International Hostel in Boulder and dropped off my things and headed back out, this time to the Walrus, a local watering hole. On my way there I made a stop into a Margaret Ann favorite, the Patagonia store. Although I did not purchase anything, because A.) I spent all my money on my crazy expensive $6 smoothie, and B.) I have barely enough room on my bike for a stick of gum. After some more exploring I headed back to the Hill where I visited Half Fast Subs which my tour book Let’s Go recommended and my old roommate Joe. They have ridiculous subs, mine was a crab meat, guacamole, tomatoes, lettuce and some other stuff concoction, and it was as good as it was ridiculous. They also sell pitchers of long island ice teas, something I did not need giving the altitude I was at, but I had to since I was only in boulder once. After a relaxing evening at Half Fast Subs and some more exploring I headed back to my Hostel where I proceeded to crash.

June 25, 2008

I got kind of an early start from Boulder, the hostel told me I had to be out by 10 so I was up and gone in the AM. I was excited for my ride today since I stayed an extra day in Boulder I had shortened the distance between me and Vail so I had to kill some time exploring Colorado. I checked my map and what do I see but Rocky Mountain National Park. But before I could depart Boulder Mav needed some more TLC and I stopped at a gas station and gave Mav a much needed oil change. Ever since my first oil change, just outside Camp Lejune, Mav had been leaking oil due to the threads on the oil plug being stripped. I had my engine re-drilled and a new screw put in for a hefty penny in Charleston however he continued to leak slowly. My good friend and former VMI roommate Greg recommended that I put some Teflon tape on the screw to help with the slow drip and magic it worked! Because I checked this morning and there was not a spot of oil on the ground. Ok so back to riding, I was headed through the Rocky Mountain National Park which climbs a good 12,000 feet.

The air was cold and going back to my hair dryer analogy with the face mask opened in the desert well when I opened my face mask in the mountains it felt like a freezer blowing on my face. I donned my full riding gear pants, jacket gloves and all and I climbed in elevation. The park is something to see, there is one road through it which runs the ridge line of the Rockies and I followed it for a good 30 miles switchbacking my way up into the clouds. As I climbed I saw more and more snow, and by the time I got to the top the snow drifts were over my head, even taller than most of the RVs driving through the park. I made a ton of stops along the way to take pictures which turned my quick 30 miles into a 2 hour long crawl, but it was well worth it. As I told Dan Katie and Tom that evening over some frosty beverages, today had to of been one of the top rides of the trip! So I got to the top of the Rockies, I played in the snow a little, threw some snowballs at Mav took a good bazillion pictures and it was back on the road. There was a lot of wildlife in the park and I saw a ton of moose, or swamp donkeys as they are sometimes referred to as because they basically chill in the swamp all day long. After leaving the park camera and Mav and me exhausted from the massive amounts of pictures and the lack of oxygen at 12,000 feet I headed to friendlier elevations. I found some awesome forest roads that would cut their way through to the Vail Valley which was my final destination, and more good riding ensued. Again thoughts of Chico Road haunted my brain but the manicured trails through the Rockies and along the Colorado River were something of a dream! They were well marked easily understood and my Garmin recognized all of them! Driving through the Rockies on single track dirt roads up and out of the valleys and along rivers was the kind of riding I had been dreaming about ever since I got a dual sport. I rode for a good 20 miles through stream crossings and gravel switch backs to a town called Radium Colorado which is a rafting outpost in the middle of nowhere on the Colorado River.

Actually there is nothing in this town but a rafting outfitter. I followed the Garmin to a dirt road labeled county road 111 however posted at the junction was a sign that said ‘NO OUTLET’ and I wasn’t going to mess around with any fence cutting and private land, so I looked around for a bit for another road out, none what so ever… I went into the Rafting outfitter and again no one there, I yell out still no one, and I was having thoughts of driving the 20 miles back through the national forest to get to a highway, finally one of the people from the rafting company pops their head out and in a puzzled look asks if I want to go rafting. No but I do want to get to the Vail Valley. Luckily Bria was helpful and she said that just an hour before me there were two guys on mountain bikes who were on their way from Alaska to the southernmost tip of South America, an epic ride none the less! Bria pointed out a small dirt road out of town and luck have it I was just a good 10 miles from Dan and Katie’s. I got the message from Dan that he and Katie were meeting up after work with a friend of theirs to get some more frosty beverages, exactly what I wanted after a long day on the trails. I meet up with them at the Riverwalk in Edwards a town just outside of Vail. I met their friend Tom and Katie brought Isla the coolest most well behaved chocolate lab retriever mix I have ever met. Tom like Katie and Dan is also Architecting in Vail, an incestuous industry as they refer to it as, since they all work for different companies yet all seem to know each other. Good company and good beer, is exactly what I was in need of after being on the road for so long. One drink turned into couple more and the altitude started setting in, so we left my bike at Tom’s office and I headed back to Katie and Dan’s and crashed. Tomorrow starts my adventure to Telluride, and more mountain riding!

June 26, 2008

Let me first start off by saying I was awoken this morning to a lady banging pots and pans together, and no it wasn’t the town crazy making her morning music, apparently a lone bear stumbled into the camp and was rummaging around for some deliciousness in the trunk of my neighbor John’s car. In any rate I did not have any food in my tent so no bear bothered me, that and I was completely and utterly exhausted, and no not even a bear could get me out of my sleeping bag. So that is this morning, yesterday though was another epic riding day. I am convinced that the whole national scenic highway and byway thing is completely and utterly useless in Colorado because every road you drive on here is the most scenic road yet. I have yet to find a bad road to drive down in Colorado. It used to be when I was rolling through new Mexico and parts of Texas and Mississippi you would see nothing for hours and hours and it was pretty boring, but here my hand and foot never get a rest from the clutch gas brake combination. In and out of the turns up and down hills its awesome I have so much fun here. So now I’m in telluride and another great town I might add, I have met so many people here who basically came here for vacation and just picked up and stayed here, and I would too, that is if I didn’t have a great job waiting for me back home. So I rode from Vail valley on highway 24 which eventually becomes highway 82 and I went through Independence Pass which takes you to Aspen. Usually Independence Pass is closed due to snow but it was open however there was still a massive amount of snow. I crossed through the pass at about 12,000 + feet and in doing so I crossed the continental divide… again… I might have forgot to mention that I crossed it when I was going through Rocky Mountain National Park a few days before. I stopped in Aspen for a bit, drove around explored the town, its a lot different than Vail however the money is still there. I spotted a couple Ferraris, and I parked good ole Mav next to some of them to take pictures, because of course we all know Mav is just as great as a $500,000 sports car. So more riding, when I left Aspen I really dropped in elevation and I was getting a little tired, I guess it was due to my very early start which I don’t normally get. As I dropped in elevation it got warmer and I had to shed the full riding gear that I was wearing. I made it to town just at the foothills of the mountains leading up to Telluride called Montrose and I stocked up on some necessary provisions, I was running out of my main course of Ramen and tuna fish and beef jerky. With the necessary provisions I was ready to take on more mountains, the ride up into Telluride was as amazing as everyone has told me it would be, and to add to its amusingness my camera battery decided to die on me right as I was getting to the good stuff. Approaching Telluride I was getting pretty excited, well let me TELL you about TELLuride, it’s a town of towns, I used this description and analogy to describe the people and atmosphere to Margaret Ann last night. Now if you don’t know bars in Charlottesville then this description will do you no good. Ok so the Telluride atmosphere can best be described in the tipsy text message I sent to MA, which goes like this “It’s very mountainy, chill like Virginian on a Sunday night, mature like Zyde Co when it first opened, but with some class like Michael’s Bistro. Now people I wish I could continue my raving review of Telluride however there are mountains and waterfalls and dirt roads to be explored. I will have to continue this at a later date. But I must say, everyone deserves a visit to Telluride!