Hump Day

Yep, Big Wednesday up in here.

As planned, spent the morning in Boulder. As usual this made me feel fat. Had some good visits though. After a tasty burrito, I bid my Colorado cohort good-bye and headed up into the mountains. Hit some serious snow on Loveland pass, so I was quite pleased when it was (relatively) warm and sunny upon my arrival in Glenwood Springs. Visited another shop and then got out for a nice little ride.

Felt so good. Hadn’t ridden in a week! Seems to be my pattern these days. Do a couple good weeks and get some form starting to brew, then take a week off! 

Anyway, I found a cheap hotel and set up camp for the night. 

Currently watching Tour of CA on TV. Need to get some rest as I have another big day tomorrow up in Aspen. Wish me luck!

I nearly forgot…

to post.

Another looooong day. But good. Definitely good. Worked the Colorado Springs to Denver area. Drove my sick as rental cargo van all up in that piece. I have my new partner for Colorado with me and that makes the day more enjoyable. It’s kinda nice going into shops with a partner. I’m also staying at his house and eating his food, which is beyond nice!

Nothing to crazy to report. The demo did not go well in terms of getting people on bikes, but all the shops that saw them liked the bikes, so I’ll just try to learn how to do it better and roll with it. Some cool ideas for the future, for sure.

Tomorrow, we’ll hang around Boulder for the morning and then I’ll head over to Aspen…another big day in the van! Yes! It’s not so bad really. Luckily, I like driving! We’ll see how Aspen goes. It’s still very early season for them. “Mud season” as they call it in the high country.

Anyway, I’m pretty wiped out. For whatever reason, I can never go to bed early when I’m on the road even when I know I should.

Not sure where I’m staying tomorrow night, so that should be an adventure. I did pack my sleeping bag to sleep in the van, but it’s completely wall-to-wall full of bikes and boxes, so that’s out. A little cold yet to be sleeping under the stars. Especially at elevation. No tell Motel? Perhaps, perhaps, perrrrr-haps.

Very wow.

Me again! I am “on the road again”, and even though I missed a couple trips in there, I’m eager to get back on blogging form. Putting it nicely, writing improves when you write. Or to put it less nicely, my writing gets worse when I never write or only write enough for Facebook. So here I am. Plus, I had a day. And what a day I had.

So, I got on the road around 8:15 this morning. My mom and her husband were in town over the weekend, so they walked the kids to school at the same time before they headed back to Sedona. Anyway, I had to go to Uhaul to pick up a cargo van as I’m doing a bike demo this trip and didn’t have room for all the bikes in my little wagon. That went pretty smoothly. 

I was actually going to leave earlier, but I had to go to the UPS hub (which doesn’t open until 9:00) to pick up the bikes for the demo as the rep who had them shipped them a day late and sent everything out of whack. I got the bikes okay, and everything was on schedule. And it was a tight schedule. I had a meeting scheduled for 3:45 in Cheyenne and Google Maps put it at 7 hours. Meaning if I had NO stops, I needed to make up 15 minutes. 

I got to Evanston and had made up around 5 minutes. If you don’t know Evanston, it’s on the Utah-Wyoming border, so it’s mostly where Utahans go to get their booze, porn and fireworks. Anyway, as I pulled into Evanston, I saw a sign saying “I-80 Closed- Winter Weather” or some such. I didn’t want to believe it, so I went another mile down the road where the police turned me around. I should add that although we had kind of a stormy day in Utah yesterday, it was sunny the entire drive to that point. 

So, I wasn’t making the meeting. These things happen. Usually to other people, but I guess it was my turn.

Anyway, in the interest of this post not going on forever, I got to hang out in Evanston for a couple hours. Ate lunch, went for a run on the old High Uintas Stage Race criterium course, hung out with truckers. Finally, they opened the road…Unfortunately, the sudden influx of a million or so trucks combined with narrowing the 3 lane highway to 1 lane meant I spent another hour or so inching my way up a pass a little ways out of Evanston.

And now I was way off schedule. The rest of the drive is pretty much a haze. I only stopped once between Evanston and Denver and that was only to get gas and pee. There was a ton of snow as I got further into Wyoming. It did snow on me quite a bit, but it was mostly just quick squalls, but you could see they’d gotten quite a bit the last day or so. Wasn’t what I expected in May. Got in around 9:45 tonight, which is really long for that drive, but I’m here in one piece and I guess that’s what counts.

Really excited to get back in the van tomorrow!!