Tour de Cure training ride, 07/26/09 and BN&P ride, 07/25/09

Well, Friday night I headed down to Colorado Springs to visit my friends Danielle and Kyle. We had some great conversation and SUSHI! The next morning we got up early and headed out on the BN&P motorcycle ride. BN&P = Beaters, Noobs and Princess ride. I don't ride a beater (read: no duct tape) and I'm certainly not a Noob = Newbie on a motorcycle so I did have to be a Princess, which was only fitting. Here is the collection of bikes at Danielle and Kyle's house on Sat morning and at the meeting place in Woodland Park.




I returned home through rain and hail (I took NO rain gear, of course) in time for a bath and went to see my friend Ben's band play - they were REALLY good! Jennifer met me and we spent the night meeting, greeting and playing.

Sunday morning I woke up at the early hour of 11 am! I had a 40 mile training ride planned for the Tour de Cure on August 22nd... Tour de Cure. I will be riding 62 miles that day and have been slowly working my mileage up since May 30th which was a 10 mile ride (and 5 weeks after knee surgery!). It was a great ride. I got to see the damage on the west side of town from the storms last week. I stopped about 10 miles out to look at the map of the trail I had been trying to find for 10 miles and while I was stopped....

At this point I was in Golden and was headed towards Commerce City... what was I thinking? I am pretty sure that I got flashed by a man in the bushes at one point and certainly will never forget the older man in the colorful briefs. Why can't people just wear pants?!?!?! I will NEVER take that trail again. I arrived home after 3 long hours (40 miles, remember?) and realized that it hadn't been that difficult. Makes me look forward to this weekend and the 50 miles I get to ride! I'll keep you all posted on how it goes!

I got an email today from the event promoters at Tour de Cure and they have a 'special' VIP package for anyone with over $1000 by the end of July. Guess that means I have a few short days to come up with another $50?!?!?! Bet I can do it!

karyn

4x4?

This weekend we split our time amongst two groups of friends. Karyn went on the Beater, Noob & Princess ride. I haven't gotten the details, but she had fun. She had to play the part of a princess so she made a tutu for the bike, and one for me too!

I'll drop in a pic for you later.

But I spent a little time on the trails!!! Alex joined me heading out Friday night, we drove Rock Creek out of Allenspark. That was a fun ride. Nothing too exciting, but a long rocky trail, which abruptly ended at a sign. We turned down to pick up the best camping spot we could find which, I believe we did.The next morning we got up headed down to meet up with some friends. We were planning the Middle St Vrain and back on the Coney flats trail. Camping somewhere near the end.

Karyn and I happened up there a few years back... Her green truck was less than 1 year old at the time. We had a great ride into the trailhead for Buchannan pass and Red Deer Lake. We backpacked into Red Deer for a night. We rode these two trails backwards from this trip.

We started out pretty clean.
This was the first obstacle which turned out to be a little tricky... I hit bottom right about here:

Then we found some mud!




This is David who joined us on his Dakar.

Erin and Jake joined us bringing along the newest Lewis we know, Xander... I don't know, you figure out how they pronounce that...



We eventually got to the trailhead for Red Deer just past the turn for Coney Flats. We decided this was a great place to camp. So we setup tents, Mom and Xander went to bed, Jake David and Alex went for a hike, but that was all after I was already out in the river Fishing.

I caught a lot of 4-6 inch Brookies... That's not all that exciting, and especially for me, not that great of eating... So I really thought about keeping the fat 9"er that I caught, but I didn't have anything to keep him in...

The next morning we hit the trail again. It wasn't long before we found some fun!



Then there was more fun!






And eventually we got out to Beaver Reservior.


A quick lunch, David was wet, as you can imagine... We packed up his bike.

We parted ways, again Alex joined me to check out a 1965 plane wreck up another 3 mile trail.

Of course the trail description didn't say it was hard, infact easier than what we had been on... Alex did not agree...



The plane was a jet trainer T33.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_T-33

The engine was several hundred feet down hill...


Then we headed back home. I'm home early for a Sunday night (4:45pm)... I still had a 1/2 tank of gas!

Mean time, I showed back at the house, just before Karyn finished her 40 mile training ride for Tour de Cure (for diabetes) in August. I'll ask her to post up when she has more energy

Moonlight Classic

If you haven't heard of the moonlight classic, it is a ride through Denver. Not just any ride. First they close off a few roads, and you with 3000-5000 other people start in front of the capital building... That's still not all of it! The 'Family lap' starts at 10:30pm. The regular lap starts at 11:30pm.

I've had a great time on this ride every time I have ridden it.

If you are looking for a fast pace, you better be first in line. The lap is about 10 miles, and we took 1 hour to ride it. There was even a group handing out beer to the riders. (Not more than 1oz each cup.)

This past weekend....

I thought Tucker might post up first but I am mistaken. I, unfortunately, can only cover Saturday.... Tucker has pics of Sat night and possibly Sunday but I have NO idea! Saturday started with this hair-brained idea of laying rock in the back yard.

but first! deck update - we have ONE set of stairs....

Then the rock began on sat morning....
before:

During....

More during....

More during....

done, with that 'little' part...


After that a great dinner...

Later we did the Moonlight Classic which is a GREAT charity ride through Downtown Denver - Tucker has pics. Sunday I could swear we worked on the house more.... but, again, I think Sunday is tucker's call!

Car update....

Well, I've had the Jetta for about a month. I filled up this weekend in Pagosa Springs, 570 miles on the tank and no where near empty, 13-something gallons, $34.75 = 43 mpg. Not bad considering 300 of those miles were put on with 2 bicycles standing tall on top of the car! That's about $.06/mile for those paying attention. The Aspire normally got about 36 or 37 mpg. So, I've met my goal of increasing vehicle capability - people and stuff - and increased gas mileage.
Whoo hoo!
43 mpg!

A trip to Pagosa

Last weekend we went to Pagosa Springs to see Bev and Ed and deliver some fish from AK.

The day started badly, with a dead motorcycle battery which meant we could no longer ride and we'd have to meet up to carpool - but did mean we could take bicycles!

I met Tucker at a Park-n-Ride and we loaded up the Jetta for it's first trip!

*I PROMISE that it was a Park-n-Ride and NOT a VW dealership!!!*

The ride down proved to us that we really had not wanted to ride our motorcycles (the ride home on Sunday did too!)

We arrived late Friday night and got up early on Saturday for a 26 mile bicycle ride which started near Chimney Rock. We rode 13 miles down the road toward Ignacio and back.

Exhausted from exercise and HEAT we got back and had some lunch and lots of water. Bill had come down from Keystone and the rest of the weekend is a blur of great conversations, watching the deer in the yard and trying to talk to Princess - apparently we were so busy that the cameras never made it out again!

Stay tuned for a post next week about what's happening this weekend!

Alaska 2009

I think you have probably already looked over these pictures, but I thought a little description for some would be good.


Nice 44!


Red Salmon

Combat fishing on the Kenai River just south of the Russian River Confluence.

Heading into Homer!

Calm down little halibut!


Not bad for a couple hours of Halibut fishing!


Limit 5 rock fish per license.

Someone in the group picked up a Tiger Rock fish!

Quartz Creek Campground. (pronounced krik)

Back to the Russian for some more Reds!

Russian River Campground, Thanks for coming down Doug, Victoria and Gabrielle.

Hope you had a good time fishing Alicia. Glad to have you join us.
nice little brown bear, you just keep walking that way, and we'll walk the other.



Just remember... No target shooting.

Alyeska in the summer time!

Time to head for the airport. The sun hasn't set yet, 10:10pm.

hmm... weekend

Nothing exciting to report. We 'were' going to ride our motorcycles down to see Bev and Bill/Dad this weekend in Pagosa Springs.

I carefully charged the battery in mine on Wed night so that I could ride it yesterday and test out the latest repair (new crankscase cover - cover needed to be replaced after I backed into the motorcycle in my truck. yep, that's awesome).

Everything went smooth and I packed up my tail bag and went out to the garage at 5:45 this morning and... not enough battery to start although all the lights turned on. ARGH!

So, move tail pack to car and go inside to grab car key. Car key is NOT where I thought I left it so I grab the spare as I'm running out of time - trainer at 6am!

Coffee on island in kitchen where I left it before the first garage trip.

Change out of motorcycle clothes and lose my sunglasses in the process? Back to the garage... leave.

Call Tucker on the way to work, after training, to let him know that I have no motorcycle. I ask if he'll ride in a car with me... he agrees and offers to bring my bicycle with him! yeah! best news of the whole day - my coffee is STILL on the island at home... I suddenly realize many more things I have forgotten and 'pester' Tucker with reminder emails of about 2 things at a time over 3 emails. argh!

Well, I'm planning on leaving work at 4 and heading to meet Tucker somewhere along the route! We'll move the bike to my car and Tucker and Tucker's stuff and hope to be in Pagosa sometime between 9 and 10.

Then tomorrow Bill shows up with, as Bev put it, the noisy cat and the good dog ;)

Hopefully a bicycle ride for me - tomorrow is a 26 mile training ride for the Tour de Cure! And maybe some fishing and good company. Looking forward to all of it.

We were going to split directions on the way home so that I could complete my training ride and Tucker could visit some friends near Co Springs. Now we can BOTH go! Whoo hoo!

Stay tuned....

Cousin time!

What a great trip!

More pics... here!