Elephant Rock, 2016

Sunday, June 5, 2016;


After one afternoon and one full day of riding for 57 miles worth of high elevation training .... I was feeling pretty good about the elevation difference between Oklahoma and the Front Range of Colorado. And this was true, I really had no ill effects from the elevation difference at all. Felt pretty good, actually. Should have trained much, much harder in big hill country though, as that was what proved to be my nemesis on this ride. I had signed up for the 62 mile (100k) ride, but with the ride from my hotel to the start and back from the end, I ended up with 65.4 miles total. A good distance, one that makes me happy,  I can still say ..... "a Century this year .... why yes ..... I did a Century this year" (100 kilometers) .... Grin .... 

Sunday dawned early, and I was planning to be gone by the crack of dawn ...... well ..... I was close.... dawn cracked at 5:25, I left the hotel at 5:45 got in line at the start and left right at 6am sharp. 

 Right out of the gate .... one of the toughest hills on the route, at least it seemed that way before the legs got warm and the lungs got working. If you look just over the top of the red helmet in front of me, you can see the riders going over and through the cut. At this time, I didn't realize, this wasn't the top, it just looked that-a-way. It got a bit steeper and further yet after I made it over that first little hill before finally summiting.  There were a number of riders walking the last 1/4 mile or so, but the old guy wasn't one of them. It was a plod, but one stroke after a painful other ..... I finally rolled over the top. I was rewarded by a nice fast smooth downhill, only to start up another climb, fortunately not as tough as the first one. This seemed to set a precedent for the rest of the 62 miles. There were a lot of hills, some up, some down, some fun, some ..... not so much.

 Throughout most of the first half or so of the ride, Pikes Peak was the dominant feature, always beckoning ...

 The first rest stop, just off Highway 83, and a little bit of gravel getting to it. It was a welcome rest. The uphill tailwind I was hoping for became an all day headwind. Every time the route would turn, the wind would turn. Starting out from the south, it traversed to the west and then northwest, then finally on the last "easy" part back into Castle Rock, it was straight out of the north right in our faces again. I thought for sure the ride promoters planned it that way so none of us would get overheated on the climbs. 
The first rest stop was welcome. They had the rest stops at just the right intervals, not too close, but not so far you were hurting for food or drink before you got there. Most were about 15 to 18 miles apart. 

 Gravel route into the rest stop.

 The highway 83 southbound leg was all uphill, gradual, but noticeable. It kept me at 8 to 10 mph most of the way up.... into the wind, of course ....

 Finally, we turned west, and into a bit of piney country.

 Topping out the little hill on Highway 105

 Roller Coaster Road! This was the most fun part of the whole ride! A series of fast downhills with the wind at our backs, (I was so fast, the wind hadn't caught on yet that I had changed direction), followed by big uphill rollers, and another fast downhill, and repeat. ... It was fun!! I could have just gone back and done that part several times.

 Kept seeing this nice young lady on the road on almost every climb. Finally we just decided to ride together for a while while we chatted, enjoyed her company for a while. She was a great photographer as well, as she got me in this nice touristy pose with Pikes Peak in the background.

 Slow .....well yes ...... what else did you expect? Just topping out one of the steeper hills, before another fast descent.

 Pretty wildflowers coming into Palmer Lake. Up in the hills in the background, just to the south and west of Palmer Lake a bit was where one might find the namesake of our ride.

 Elephant Rock .... A natural sandstone arch, just to the west of Palmer Lake. Not visible from the ride, it's off a gravel road, and I believe on private property. I did manage to find a picture on-line, however, just to show you what it looked like.

 More gravel road, this time around 1/4 mile long going into the Palmer Lake rest stop. 1/4 mile in,  1/4 mile out. I didn't think it was bad at all, but a lot of riders parked their wheeled steeds right off the pavement and walked in. I rode ..... it was better gravel than I have around my place.

 Palmer Lake rest stop

 Palmer Lake. You can make out just the seat and the stem bag of my bike just inside the fence to the right of the post.

 Live entertainment at a rest stop .... COOL! These guys were really quite good!

 Some pretty scenery after leaving Palmer Lake.

After Palmer Lake and the big crowd, I never saw my photographer/riding companion again, but this young lady rides up next to me, and started a conversation, and stayed with me for most of the rest of the ride. This first hill, she out pulled me a bit, but I think she shot herself in the foot, as I out pulled her on all the rest. She waited for me at the top, and we raced down the long downhill. She was fun company. She was also next to me when they took the professional ride photo .... haven't seen it yet.

 Long downhill from Palmer Lake. Not steep, just a good 38mph or so downhill. Not sure where I got my max speed for the day of 47mph at, but I can guarantee I wasn't looking at the speedometer, only the road ahead at that speed.

 I felt really wasted at Palmer Lake, legs were sore, I was really tired out, but on the last 15 miles or so, even into the wind, I felt much stronger, and passed a lot of the riders who had previously passed me up. I actually felt better at the end of the ride than I did at the halfway point, and we still had several more uphills after Palmer Lake. I guess I'm like an old plow horse ... smell the barn, and I get really fast! Post ride lunch was spaghetti and meatballs and salad, and ice cold Fat Tire Ale. OOooohh, Heaven!!

 Look at all the bikes! This was only a small portion of the more than 6,000 riders attending. They had a commercial area where they had vendors from everywhere, live music, and fun.

 I had to admit, before the ride, I was a bit intimidated by the sheer number of riders and the size of the ride. With the staggered starting times and each group starting anywhere within their 2 hour bracket, the number of riders was never an issue. As with most rides like this, I kept seeing the same faces over and over throughout the ride. This was a super, excellently supported ride. Many, many hard working sheriff deputies and highway patrol officers keeping the motorists and the bicyclists all safe and happy. Great rest stops, great sag service, great entertainment, wonderful glass smooth roads, nice cooling breeze in our faces ..... yes ..... it was Great! A fun ride, a challenging ride,  and one I would do again someday. 

The ride jersey was from last year ..... one of my two bargain jerseys, the tee was this year's. 

 Really enjoyed the ride and the fun riding for the entire weekend, and I have some great things and photos to remind me of the awesome times.

Denver Area Trails

June 5, 2016;

Plum Creek Trail and Cherry Creek trail;

After visiting with grandkids, I was fairly late getting to my hotel at Castle Rock, and tired. Got dinner at a Subway, showered, and went to bed ..... tomorrow will be another day. So it was!  

The Front Range, Denver and vicinity has a wealth of multi-use pathways and trails, it would take me a week to explore them all, maybe longer. I knew there was a little trail at Castle Rock and wanted to ride that in the morning, then later on to Franktown to explore the Cherry Creek Trail. So, starting off from my hotel, I found an access point just two blocks from the hotel, hidden behind the local veterinary shop.  Turning on to the trail, this is what greeted me. Prettier and better maintained than the road.

 At every turn, another surprise and pretty view of Plum Creek.

 Castle Rock bluff, the namesake of the town.

 Another shot of my bike complimenting the local scenery.

 Past the veterinary shop and on up to the north, the trail gets prettier the further north you go. There were also more locals to stop and chat with.

 There were hills on the north end.

 And tunnels

 More hills and pine forested trail

 And several Magpies that followed me looking for a handout.

 The old tree didn't make it. But did make for a reason to stop and take a picture.

 Castle Rock bluff from the north side.

  
I rode on past my exit point and rode into town to visit a drug store, (sunscreen forgotten) and a bike shop, ( tire boot forgotten) I will probably not need a tire boot unless I didn't have one. Then I found a nice coffee shop with outdoor tables and a bunch of cyclists to chat with, next door was my ace dicovery for the day, a super great sandwich shop and bakery. Rode around a bit more visiting with firemen behind the fire station, several locals who liked my "Hotter'n Hell" jersey, and ended up talking for 20 minutes. Then it was back to the bike path, and back to the hotel where I loaded the bike up and headed for Franktown. The trailhead was a couple of miles north of Franktown, and it was there I accessed the Cherry Creek Trail, and headed north. This is a very nice trail, although much heavier used than Plum Creek, it was nice to ride. More open landscape, and the trees are more deciduous varieties like cottonwoods. 

 An open urban trail, always within sight of homes, at times, their backyards mere feet away. I tried to convey a more country look by not taking pictures of peoples backyards, but concentrating on more open spaces. This trail goes on for something like 40 miles one way, which was more than I wanted to do today, so at the 20 mile point, I turned around and headed back.

 Pretty Cherry Creek also made better by the addition of my bike.

 Found two riding companions, each for about 20 minutes of riding, first, a fairly fast gentleman on a racing type bike who came up behind me and started talking ..... my HHH jersey attracting  attention again. We rode and chatted until he turned off on the 470 Trail, and I went straight until I got my 20 miles in. I get started on these trails, and I could go on forever. I had a big ride tomorrow, however, and I was starting to have enough riding already. The second rider I got to ride with was this pretty young lass on a mountain bike ..... also pretty darned fast ..... or maybe this old guy was just pretty darned slow. Anyway we rode and chatted back south until the Parker Trailhead where she got off to go to her car. Fun gal!

 When I got back to Castle Rock, it was time to head on down to the fairgrounds and pick up my packet. So, I unloaded my bike off the car, and rode on down to the fairgrounds and back.

 It was a long day riding, I swung off into town to Maddie's on 3rd street, and had a very cold very good Weitzenbrau (wheat beer), it went down so fast, it needed to be refilled. Served in the authentic 1/2 liter glass, just like they served it in Germany.

The Denver area trail system is really super, the people using it were friendly and pleasant, and I really enjoyed my visit to the trails here. I kind of wished I would have arranged to stay a little longer to check out more. I think it's the best way to get around in a large city like Denver, especially when one is from out of the area.  Denver has many miles of trails, and most connect urban areas with the center of the city, giving access to shopping areas as well as food and drink. 
Total miles of fooling around riding pre-ride was 57 ..... I hope that will be good enough to get acclimated before the big ride tomorrow. 

Garden Of The Gods

June 3, 2016;

Colorado Springs' Garden Of The Gods;

This really wasn't going to be a separate blog post, but it was a nice little diversion, so I thought it would make a good post all by itself. Garden Of The Gods park is beautiful to visit, and because of that, it is a very popular destination for visitors in the Colorado Springs area. Almost a must-do in fact. I had stopped at Colorado Springs because my grandson and his wife live there, and I had never seen their home yet, but I arrived a bit early, and so, to kill some time, (time dies far too quickly in Gods Country) and to help get used to the elevation there as well as getting my climbing legs on, I drove up to the park with the intention of riding my bike through it. There are two paved loops that offer nice wide bike lanes to one side, but the entire distance for both loops turned out to be only 8 miles from the Visitor's Center and back. It turned out to be such a nice ride, I did it twice. 

 The Garden Of The Gods park is situated at the foot of Pike's Peak just to the north and west of Colorado Springs. If you have never been before, it's certainly worth the visit. I spent three days camping here in 1976 during a BMWMOA motorcycle rally. While the park is not large, it does offer some stunning scenery fitting for "A Garden Of Gods ". I parked at the visitors center, and if you look closely at the header photo, you can see the road leading into the park. The header photo was one I took from the second floor of the Visitor's Center. I was a bit worried about traffic going into the park as the road from the Visitors Center into the park itself has no bike lane, but people driving were very aware, and there were many "watch for bicycles" signs along the way. It really wasn't bad at all. It is, however, uphill all the way well past the first main parking area in the park. Here is what the official visitor's guide tells me

Biking in the Garden is a great adventure!

Come to the Garden of the Gods Visitor and Nature Center before starting your bicycle tour. All one-way roads in the Park have paved biked lanes. The Garden Drive/Juniper Way loop is 6 miles with a 15% grade. We would be happy to point out some additional trails you are bound to love.

The above excerpt was taken from the official guidebook. 
  I not only did the Juniper Way / Garden Drive loop, but also up to Balancing Rock. Again, it was tough to get any miles, but there were a few hills along the way, half of them were up, the other half were down. I don't think "I" saw any 15% grades, but a couple of the hills were a bit steep, down into the 4 or 5 mph range. 

The picture below is Balancing Rock. An obliging tourist snapped my photo for me as I did not take my little tripod with me. I had to get at least one "I was there" picture. Tourist I was, but instead of driving through adding to the air pollution, I took the scenic/green way through using two leg power. One of the nice things about taking a bicycle through the park was that I could stop any time I wanted to take pictures, whereas autos could only stop in authorized parking areas. You do lose the bike lane on the Balancing Rock loop, but traffic was decent to this old man on a bike. On the downhills, I could easily outpace the cars, however, one needs to be careful as they stop much faster than I, on the uphills, there was no problem with this.

Pike's Peak from the Garden Of The Gods.

The nice wide bike lanes were really nice, smoothly paved and had signs all along telling drivers not to park in bike lanes. Unfortunately, there seem to be many drivers who are unable to read, as I had several drivers pull into the bike lane right in front of me and stop and get out to take pictures. They weren't really parking, just stopping for a minute, right? Ah well, it is one of those things you deal with in a popular tourist area. There was a lot of traffic, and a lot of tourists, and only a few assholes.

There were times I had to wait 4 or 5 minutes to get a picture without a car, and sometimes one snuck in anyway. Visiting this park on a bicycle means you will have to contend with a lot of vehicle traffic, but in reality, it really did not present a problem at any time. 

After the second time around, it was time to go back to the visitors center, change out of my riding shorts, purchase a nice hat pin, look through the nice museum they have and then head south a ways to enjoy a pleasant visit with grandson and family. The bottom line is this ..... if you find yourself in Colorado Springs with a bicycle ..... Do this!! You will not be disappointed.