Kinda the best day of the year in Fort Collins. Made the run out to Costco with a belly full of pancakes, parfaits and breakfast tacos.
A summer solstice campout with some Fort Collins bike folks. Many thanks to Road 34 for organizing and New Belgium for supplying sixteen 12-packs for twenty seven people. Tooled out of town, over Horsetooth, up the steep south approach to Stove Prairie, and onto the dirt turn off of Buckhorn Road. With many stops for swimming, and cold malty refreshment, Saturday didn't feel like one of the hottest days of the year. The decent from camp, a few miles short of Pennock Pass, was refreshing and cool, and our small contingent of early risers was back in town before lunch on Sunday.
Early summer afternoons in the mountains are never a sure thing. Today was no exception. We dropped off the car for service and took the usual meandering dirt way up to Gold Hill, turned onto the Peak-to-Peak and dropped down into Nederland for lunch. The rain started promptly at noon. A "Severe Thunderstorm Watch" popped up a couple times, but the thunder was all-bark-no-bite. Descending Magnolia in the damp isn't my idea of a good time, but we made it back to town only mildly damp.
I guess we’re doing audax now.
I neglected to take any photos yesterday, so let's try that again.
Hit the train yet again, but that forced a detour through Whitewater Park. Perched upon a rock, a migrating cormorant. They fly over the house often, but I rarely spot them stationary in Fort Collins. Also, it’s turns out there are two different Coffee Outside groups that meet at the flower gardens on Friday morning.
Unlike an “allure libre” brevet, the Audax is less of an appreciation of the communal spirit, and rather a demand for it. In the Audax format, riders ride at a set pace with scheduled refuel and regroup points. If a rider needs a nature break, or experiences a mechanical issue, the group does not stop. The route was pretty, and most roads were low traffic, but the real standout was our Kansas City Audax hosts. At every control we found Keith waving and smiling; delivering good vibes, and great food, even in challenging conditions. Despite forecasts, Saturday’s weather was perfect, with rain only in the last few miles. Sunday was another story. The peloton departed late, waiting for a tardy rider and another that missed the “early start” announcement. The rain was steady and the wind came from every direction but behind. As some riders struggled, the rough weather may have contributed to a pair of unfortunate emotional outbursts. Despite that drama, the group worked well together, especially after lunch. “Rando math” and some pace line configuration experimentation established that we’d need to leave controls much earlier if we wanted to avoid DNFs caused by the prescribed pace, sedate as it may have seemed. As we approached the end, one rider contacted Keith to check on a ride leader who had stayed behind at lunch to help another captain: He was only 10 minutes behind the group. We decided to pull into the service station across from the finish, where we sat in the grass to wait for everyone to finish as a team.
The pace was civil, and the thin clouds spared us from the often brutal heat of Poudre Canyon, but it was always going to rain. At the store in Rustic a sheet of paper taped over the handle read “Soft serve closed for winter”. The sky darkened. Aside from a wet road, ten minutes of rain, and a moment that stung like hail, during which I pulled the bill of my cap low to shield my face, the storm quickly passed. I attribute the lack of precipitation to the talismanic nature of the rain jackets we’d donned in anticipation of a soaking. One hundred kilometer from our last visit, we arrived back at Ted’s Place, the filling station at the entrance to Poudre Canyon. The food situation was grim. The same sad breakfast sandwiches sat waiting, save for the one I’d eaten before the climb. None of the remaining breakfast burritos called to me. Three varieties of hot dog turned silently next to a novel option. I scooped up the two remaining “chicken and waffle” rollers, good for two hundred calories apiece. Paired with a hot dog bun they would fuel me to our next stop easily. Jenn, not a fan of a sweet and salty breakfast combination, declared the maple syrup topped concoction “disgusting” Departing Ted’s, it was clear that we should enjoy the journey north as we’d battle the typical headwind, if not worse, south from Rawhide, and we did. Mercifully, the storm had largely subsided by the time we finished up dinner, or whatever that was, in Wellington. At the 7-11 in Platteville the crowd was this year’s usual collection of weirdos. I can’t be sure what happened in this town. There appears to have been no meaningful change in the surrounding area. I can’t articulate how, but the characters that frequent the service station have taken a turn towards the bizarre. A light tailwind propelled us the final one hundred kilometers back to Louisville. Jenn and I headed home for light dinner, midnight being a bit late for big meal.
The train got me hard this morning. Fort Collins is cross crossed by train tracks and often plays host to multi-mile coal trains that stop on the tracks and bisect the town. Fortunately bicycles can often bypass the delays through a network of tunnels and bridges, but one must pick the right route. This shot, of a train stopped dead along Mason St, highlights the risk of picking incorrectly.
Another staple of the RMCC brevet early season calendar. One of the first truly warm days of spring, and everyone was out enjoying it. The ride up to Glenhaven is a mixed bag, US34 has too much traffic, but a wide shoulder. After the turn off at Drake things quiet down considerably. It’s nice to think we could continue up through Estes Park, but the better way to do Estes is from the south. A nice day out on the bike in any case.
