Gremlin's Tall Stories

Murray knocks on the door, wanting his charged up phone at 6.45am… the alarm only rings at 7am, as the van will be leaving at 7.30am. Kevin the driver is in my room anyway, so I will know what’s going on. Dave is kicking my bed, thinking it’s going to get me out of it, yeah right, I’ll be rising in my own damn time. Kevin has been slowly rising, then disappears out the room.

Around 7.15am I throw on some presentable clothes and drop my bag by the van, Kevin has been packing the van, so he takes my bag. I go back to the room for more sleep.

Kevin arrives shortly after, somewhat finishes his packing, then tries to go back to sleep on the bed. I mumble something about he shouldn’t be doing that, hell, it’s a luxury reserved for me isn’t it? I set the alarm for 8am, and once it rings, I set the alarm for 9am. Still didn’t feel like getting up.

Again I lost the hour between 9am and 10am. I remember turning off the alarm, then the next thing is its 10am. That time genie owes me a lot of time. No longer do I get a lazy start, maybe even some breakfast. With Dave gone I finally find the room book, detailing rules etc., and sure enough, it’s another 11am exit.

I pack and organise, the others all gone, and finish my trail mix for breakfast, while watching Naked Gun 2. Dragging all the bags and gear down to the bike (but not packing it), I also check out. Slipping my feet into my boots, I find them soaking wet… I suspect Dave has again played a stupid prank, and I’ll catch up with him later in the day.

Very handy having Ken though, as I just hand the front desk my room keys and it’s all sorted. The bike has been tucked away out of sight near the valet station, but more importantly, well undercover so the tyres are cold. Checking them with my pressure gauge, my suspicions are confirmed. The front is 4psi more than it should be, the rear is down 1-2psi. The shop evidently had its own ideas about pressures for tyres. I can’t be bothered hooking up the pump inside the parking garage, but I release 4psi from the front tyre.

Once packed, I dodge all the cars waiting for valets and head out of Blackhawk, along Central City Parkway to I70. The Parkway was irritating with its constantly changing limits, just because there are a few corners. No wonder the Americans can’t corner if they don’t get a chance. The temperature stays in the mid-twenties, which is actually very nice for riding in.

I’m only on I-70 west for a short time, before getting off at Idaho Springs. It’s busy, with people and cops everywhere, so there must be something on. I choose not to fill with gas, I should have plenty from yesterday and I’ll be coming back in due course. The first thing to see on today’s agenda is Mt Evans. A little over 14,000 feet high, with a road running up almost the entire mountain, Mt Cook is only 12,000 odd feet, by way of a comparison.

It’s there and back, up the road so to speak, about 30 miles one way. I’m just starting up the road and some of the others come down, past me. Looks like I can’t even be that far behind then. I forgot about the speed limits though, so it’s slow going, passing cars one by one. Initially the run is really good, with nothing in front of me by switchbacks. Predictably of course, I catch up to traffic, and after leap-frogging a few, there’s a huge queue in front of me, so I don’t even bother, crawling up the hill instead, sometimes as slow as 20mph.

At Echo Lake there’s a lot of traffic, a souvenir store and plenty of parking. I carry on instead, finding the toll booth for going up the Mt Evans Rd. Ken had mentioned we needed to pay them, but I check if they accept the annual park pass, and they do. A whole $3 saved (hey, better in my pocket than theirs) and the booth guy has noticed I’m another Kiwi.

Fortunate for me, when I was going through the booth and paying, a large group of bikes had come behind me, so when I finally got onto the road, it was nice and clear for a while. While the speed limit was 30mph, maintaining that through switchbacks was a bit harder. The views were stunning. You could see whole other mountain ranges, you were above the snowline of course, and yet there were still lakes. Once you got up high enough, the trees were no more, and it was barren tussock country. The pictures flow from the top down, as the weather was great and it’s known to change rapidly, so I wanted the view from the top in case the weather closed in.

Around 12,000 feet, the lack of oxygen was becoming noticeable. I think the cyclists probably noticed more… bloody crazy climbing all that way. I even saw several suicyclists racing down, using up the whole lane, and sometimes a bit of mine. One of the guys was even passed by a bicycle. We told him to return his keys… how embarrassing. He said it was tempting to pass another, then let him pass him back, just so he could be passed twice in a day.

Reaching the top it was pretty busy, the car park a decent size for such an altitude and it was full. I kept thinking to myself… we’re higher than the top of Mt Cook, some casually dressed, kids, taking pictures… wonder what climbers would think. Asked an Indian fella to take my picture with the official board next to the car park, then clambered up another few hundred feet to the actual top of the mountain. It was during that climb that the lack of oxygen hit me a bit more… stopping near the top, taking photos for a few people was a good excuse to get my breath back.

At the very top, another spectacular view, so more photos taken. At Echo Lake I dropped into the souvenir store to purchase a Mt Evans patch. I stopped a lot descending the mountain, taking more photos, and nearing the bottom I calculated I was 3 hours behind the ones I had seen earlier. So much for being close behind then. In Idaho Springs I stopped at the Shell station for gas and a sandwich. I left Idaho Springs around 2.30pm, down I-70 for over half an hour this time.

Even though I’d descended the mountain, I didn’t drop much below 8000 feet during the day, which is still reasonably high. Also went through the Eisenhower tunnel built in the 1970’s. Presumably, at 11,000 feet, they didn’t want to keep building the road higher, so just built it through the tunnel instead. Descending on the other side, they’d even put in some runaway truck ramps, something you don’t see in NZ. The gradient was around 10 degrees, and ran for 8 miles, so it was a useful precaution to have.

Exiting I-70 at Copper Mountain and south on 91 to Leadville, the road was reasonably open and flowing. Leadville itself, while being a bit small and evidently run down, was humming, with lots of cyclists around for some race. One of the group heard one cyclist saying, “I’ll never do this again” and his wife was grinning, so it looked like a case of told-you-so. Just beyond Leadville was Twin Lakes, a small town that simply required a photo because it was small. I’d already taken pictures of the lakes, they were stunning.

West on Highway 82, this is the highlight of my trip so far. A tight twisting road, in some places a lane each way wide, sometimes with shrubs right to the edge of the road, which made sightlines difficult. The road undulating but in reasonably good condition, and I had a real ball, sort of ignoring the limit a bit, as it was much to fun to crawl along. 82 leads you up and over Independence Pass, a 12,000 foot pass that leads to Aspen. The views were uh… stunning.

I passed through Aspen quickly. It was very beautiful, but the sun was on the way down, so photos would never have done it justice. Those that stopped to have a look around reported it was incredibly expensive, but then, with a fleet of Learjets at the airport and another landing, what would you expect? I took a detour at a roundabout to take a picture of a church, and getting back on the correct street, passed a chunk of our group, so I beeped and waved some fingers at them (as you do).

The road from Aspen to Glenwood Springs was boring. Far too much of it was 55mph and even had traffic lights, so slightly slow going. The temperature increased rapidly, going from a stead mid-twenties to staying above 32 degrees, and I watched the bike’s temperature gauge top out at 36.5 degrees, our hottest yet.

Needless to say, checking into the Best Western Inn around 6.15pm, the sight of a pool was welcome with entry into the pool delayed only long enough to stow bags and change into swimming shorts. Most of the others were already there, having a few beers around the pool. After swimming for half an hour, dinner was required, and with no-one making any plans, I headed to the supermarket down the road, in shorts, t-shirt and of course, safety sunnies… such a bad boy.

I wanted more trail mix, but found some coleslaw, carrot cake and a huge sub (all American, so you get the idea) which was the same price as two small ones, so I got that instead. Picked up some water for Gary and Barbara as well.

Returning, I had my dinner by the pool, expecting some responses to my huge sub, which of course I duly got, including some awful puns. This was finally cut short when their pizzas arrived. 5 huge 18 inches I believe, which a group of 15 odd couldn’t finish, and had more than a pizza’s worth left over. Dave finally appears and I have it out with him… it would appear he isn’t pleasing the group, as he left breakfast without paying as well. I tell Dave bluntly to leave me, my gear and my bike alone, or he won’t like the consequences… we’ll see how long it lasts as he’s acting more like a baby than a grey bearded mature male. He’s trying to pass off what he did as revenge for something he thinks I did back in Big Sky… a pity I share a room with him (and Kevin) on multiple nights coming up…

I say my goodnights to the group rolling around full of pizza, Dave already had the room lights off, so I do my write up outside. Kevin joins me for a short while to read the book, so he has an idea where our bags need to be that night. I have a shower and head to bed.

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