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Saturday, July 4: First, I hope everyone had a happy holiday  yesterday. I’m a day late in writing this blog, as I sit here right now it’s Sunday morning. We’re in Denver at Drew’s house, and as usual Judy and I were up at 5 AM. Funny how the body get used to a rhythm, resets to that rhythm, and then you’re dialed in. Normally, back home, I was always up at 6 AM, but on this trip 5 AM has been the norm, and now no matter how much I want to sleep in….that internal alarm goes off and there I am, up at 5 AM on a day where I don’t have to do a damned thing! I so wanted to just sleep until ?????, but nope, here I am at the computer just as if I were getting ready to ride at 7 AM.


Oh well. So, yesterday was kind of like a broken up day - half for riding/half for travel. I’d decided Friday evening, as we were relaxing at Tequila’s restaurant in Trinidad (AMAZINGLY GOOD FOOD) that rather than do this ugly grunt push on Saturday to finish the segment to Trinidad, which would be 80+ miles, that instead I just do half of the segment and then use the early afternoon to drive to Drew’s house in Denver. This so we’d arrive at a decent hour - like mid afternoon - rather than at 8 or 9 PM that night. 


Honestly, I did this as much for me as I did for Judy. Right now I’m pretty cooked mentally and physically. The grind of two months on the road with this trip is definitely starting to take it’s toll on me. It’s so different than my prior 4 trans continental trips. On this one there just does not seem to be a stretch of days where I can relax and just enjoy the pure pleasure of riding, which to me can be like this joyful, spiritual experience. Nope, on this trip there’s always the coordinating of the segments for both bike and van, there’s the planning of where we’ll end up and where we’ll stay, there’s the worries of sandburs, of roads that don’t exist, of roads that are unridable, of Judy getting lost, stuck or getting into an accident through no fault of her own, and then there’s my work, my job, and doing my best to put in the quality time at that in-between all this extraneous stuff. 


Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not asking for sympathy here, because for one, I signed up for this detail, and two, I do have this wonderful freedom to do what I’m doing, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world….BUT if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years it’s that no matter who you are and what you do, life’s just not always blue skies and a bowl of cherries. All that extraneous stuff, the tough stuff, that bad stuff, the tedious stuff, well, that’s to be expected. It makes the good times great, and the memories greater! And that’s kind of what I tell people about this American Dirt trip….most of it is NOT fun, most of it is NOT enjoyable, most of it is a test! The fun comes when if and when I finish this thing. The fun is knowing that I had the wherewithal to complete the task. The fun is “passing the test!”  


So with that being said, I kind of took a more casual approach to yesterday’s riding, knowing that we had a wonderful couple of days ahead of us where we could just relax at Drew’s house in Denver, recharge, and then get after it again. We left the hotel in Trinidad at about 7 AM, with the dread of making that 60-mile drive back to the east on Rt 160 to pick up where I left off on Friday - out in the middle of nowhere at the junction of 185 Rd on 26 Rd. So we’re kind of jabbering away as Judy’s doing the drive, and inadvertently we go straight at this road junction where we should have taken a right onto 160. We ended up going about 14 miles to the north before I realized that we goofed up. So there was a half hour out the door. 


Got back on track, took 160 east and suddenly I was looking at about a 9 AM start time for riding, not exactly what I’d envisioned for a “mellow & short” day in the saddle. I want to do this grunt section, about 35-40 miles from Branson, CO to Trinidad with about 400-500 feet of elevation gain, when we come back from our micro-vacation in Denver, so on this day I did a segment backwards - from Branson east to the middle of nowhere junction. Part of my decision for the backwards ride was the wind direction - stiff and gusty out of the southwest. I figured that if I rode that backwards I’d have a little relief from the headwind stuff and made the half day easier…plus I might benefit from riding DOWN elevation rather than up as I’d been doing for the past 4 days. 


We got to Branson, this little place that’s damned near a ghost-town, and I got going on 4 Rd. The legs just felt like cement pillars. I mean they were just so tired and lifeless. BUT I had this amazing tailwind to kind of jumpstart me along. So after about 2 miles I felt pretty dang good. Judy drove behind me in the van. Now my only worry was from that storm we’d got caught in yesterday. It had left the road muddy in sections. There were still some standing puddles, and there were some pretty deep tire ruts from the folks who had driven on the road when it was pretty soaked on Friday. So Judy had to kind of maneuver around these. Really though, we were good, despite the fact that I worried that just maybe, just maybe around every corner, or at the bottom of every roller there’d be this giant mud-fest that the van couldn’t drive through, where she’d either have to turn around and take a long, long way around, or that we get that thing stuck. 


There were a couple times where the van kind of did a little spinner on some tacky spots. I smoked that first 4 mile section what with the tailwind and the down elevation riding. Next up was a L, north, on 147 Rd. Now this was a 10-mile section where again, I kind of worried about Judy and the van with the wet spots on the road from Thursday’s rain storm. That to was ok. On this section I absolutely killed it, going around 15-18 mph with the aid of the tailwind and the reverse elevation. Before I knew it I was done with the 10 miles, and at the 14-mile mark as was a mere 48 minutes into the ride. Sweet! So we ended up at the junction of Rt 160 east and 147 Rd.


So next came the part I just didn’t look forward to - the very real possibility of riding on pavement. Now this was the one section where I had one, and only one option to avoid pavement. And I knew that would be the case as long as a year ago when I did recon on this thing via maps, and Google Earth. I could connect KS to Trinidad, CO on almost exclusively on gravel and dirt except for this measly 12-mile section. I could NOT find anything in between this 12-mile section of Rt 160 except for a faint dbl track I saw on Google Earth. It kind of ran parallel to 160 and looked more like ATC track than any kind of established road, but God knows when that map was made and if that track even existed anymore. Well, soon enough I found that where the track should have come out, about a mile before the 147 junction with Rt 160, there was nothing to my right, not even a slightest hint of a track - not single, not dbl, not even a hiking trail. And I saw nothing in that last mile of 147. There was NO track there now, at least from the 147 end. 


Decision was made, I had to ride pavement to get to my next established gravel road. And there was just no, absolutely NO way I could ride berm on this road….because no berm existed. It was simply vegetation meets pavement, and in many spots the vegetation was winning, by hanging over the roadway some 5-12 inches in places. Not only that but this stuff was just gruesome, consisting of knee to chest high thistles, cacti, weeds, sunflowers, and of course sandbur plants. The “berminator” card was out for this one. And you know what? I really wasn’t that bummed. Hell, I’d gotten away with the berminator card for over two thousand miles. I was pretty dang lucky in most cases. This time my luck had finally run out. This would be my longest continuous section of pavement riding since I started the trip, and that ain’t bad when you think about the distance from Lewes, DE to 60 miles east of Trinidad, CO!


Got going on 160 east over all these whoop-de-do rollers. I’d just hammer going down and let the momentum carry me back up and over the top. Managed to hit my fastest speed for the trip on this stretch, some 30 mph going downhill pedaling as hard as I could. Finished that section in very quickly, while at the whole time looking off to my right to see if that damned little ATC track was out there. Never saw a thing. Ok, so up next I was a R, south, on 169 Rd. This was a single lane sandy dirt road that I did not want Judy on, just too narrow with few places to turn around if trouble lay ahead. So I had her drive down the road to where I’d eventually come out. 


Started out going south and hit a brick wall what with that southwesterly headwind. I mean it felt like I had a hand against me the whole time. Next was a turn L, west, on 26 Rd. Felt much better with the wind kind of this cross tailwind. And then I came to this unmarked Y in the road. Funny thing was this wasn’t on the map. Now my gps, the Garmin Edge, told me that both ends of the Y were 26 Rd????? What the what? But the right fork really seemed to go up into this ridge, and the left fork seemed to go parallel with 160, about 3-4 miles to the north. I saw a truck heading east on 160 so I kind of had good bearing on where I was, so I went with the left fork, went down this kind of gnarly rock garden of a descent then back up and around a small abandoned ranch, and finally around this big ridge. Boom, I was, according to my gps, still on 26, and I was definitely headed east. Past a couple junction roads that I knew I was supposed to pass, and that was that. The rest of the ride I just cruised on 26 past these blooming cacti out in the vastness of Comanche National Grassland. Judy met me at Thursday’s end point and the day was done. I’d gotten 40 miles in for the day and connected the route all the way west to Branson. Time to get the heck out of there and go to Denver. 


Judy had this idea of taking a “shortcut” to get back on I-25, which involved going north on Rt 109 and then west on Rt 50 to junction with I-25. I vetoed the idea telling her that I’d rather go back to Trinidad and then go 75 mph on I-25 out of Trinidad rather than putts around through all those small towns along 109 and 50 for 50-60 miles. In my view - her way was shorter but slower; while my way was longer but faster. She wasn’t happy with the veto! And she made it a point to get Drew involved in the dispute when we got to Denver. Drew, the good lawyer that he is, declined to take a side. But between you and me - he winked at me as if to say: “yea, you did the right thing Pete.” I can say this feeling safe, because Judy does not read the blog but for once every 3 wks. 


Made it to Drew’s in about 3 hrs drive time, through some pretty stiff thunder storms in Colorado Springs. When we got there Drew was at his fitness club swimming so Judy and I just pulled out our camp chairs, set up on his porch, and had beer and wine. While watching that same thunder cell move into the Denver metro area for a second drenching storm. About an hour later Drew rolled in and did a wonderful grill session for our dinner, making us some swordfish & salmon fillets, and beef burgers with pineapple. Topped that off with a salad and we were golden - wonderful, relaxing evening. 


So that’s it for yesterday. I’ll post later this evening on what went down today. I will say that my bud Bill from Ohio is joining Judy and I for part or all of the CO American Dirt trip. He’s on his way to Drew’s house right now as I write this. So I’ll have either Judy or Bill to ride with for a week or two, which to me is just fantastic to have some companionship for a while. I’m also trying to coordinate with Drew on some section/s to ride with us while we’re in CO. Really hoping that I’ll actually get to have some of those “spiritual” rides for a spell now that we’re getting into the mts and my beloved high country of CO!