We woke up in the morning bright and early to get ready for the last day of riding.Our campground had no tables or anything, so we setlled for leftover Pizza from last night for breakfast and some coffee. A little later we were joined by Bruce and his son Harrison, who came out there to ride with us to Pueblo.

Once on our way, we had to settle for the first climb of the day, which turned out to be challenging, but nowhere near as brutal as the day before. My goal to hang with the group got thwarted pretty quickly, my legs felt they were filled with Jello. To make at least something out of that, I decided to stop more often to take pictures, after all, I was on vacation. Read more »

We left this morning after a nice hearty breakfast ( prepared by yours truly) and tackled the first leg of our trip. I took a look into the route on the elevation profile and on Jessica’s maps and everything seemed hunky dory (more on that later).
We hit Highway 50 on our way to our lunch stop in Cotopaxi and we were smoking. I didn’t pay much attention to my computer due to the heavy traffic, but Jes said our average was 22 miles. I felt good, everything just clicked together. On our way we met this guy Joe, who was doing a cross-country trip on …wait for it… Rollerblades. He just got ticketed by a state trooper; it is apparently illegal since this year to rollerblade on a Highway in Colorado
We kept him company for a little while and then headed on.

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I left for Salida at 6:00 pm today (got a ride out there from a collegue of mine) and after a fairly uneventful drive we arrived at our campsite at about 8:45. My friends arrived in Salida last night, but after battling Monarch Pass they didnt feel bad about having a day to recuperate.
Initially, I eyed a different campground than the one we are staying at, but didn’t realize that it was too far out side of Salida to be convenient.

At any rate, I arrived there within the last rays of daylight, just enough left to reassemble my bike and get my camp setup. The campground we’re staying at has a nice area for tents and the sunset, as far a I was able to watch it, with a partly cloudy sky, was a sight to behold.

Since this is my first vacation in some years I was in a somewhat celebrative mood and decided to obtain some adult beverages.Luck stroke here for me, not only was there a liquor store nearby, but they also happened to carry beer from Munich. I dutifully purchased a six-pack of Spaten, and Jes, Poo and myself spent the rest of the evenening in good converstaions, sipping Munich Lager and generally enjoying our time.

Tomorrow’s ride will take us through the Sangre De Christo Mountains to Hillside, which is our camp spot for tomorrow night, roughly about 60 miles. The idea is to be done with the day’s ride before the afternoon showers set in and enjoy a relaxing afternoon and evening.

I am also planning to hit a grocery store tomorow night and obtain some supplies and cook a nice dinner, since I heard from both o my riding partners that they feel a bit sick of the roadside food they have been eating recently.

I will hopefully have some pictures to post tomorow evening a wall as a report how the first day of riing actually went. For now I amgoing to crawl into my sleeping bag and get a good night’s sleep

I am going to go out on a multi-day ride with friends of mine (who rode all the way from San Francisco. CHeck their blog at http://www.werideeast.com) from Salida to Pueblo this week. We’ll meet Wednesday evening in Salida and then take the ride to Pueblo. This is not only going to be my first multi-day tour, it’s also my first vacation in a couple of years. So, riding my bike through beautiful Colorado, in the company of people I really like and all of this for a couple of days? Come on, how much better can it get!

Last weekend I went for a short camping trip to Chatfield State Park. This was my first attempt at some touring, although the distance was not really that much, and I enjoyed it tremendously.

I also posted a few pictures after the jump

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I purchased this bag last year together with my Fixie as a replacement for my Ortlieb Messenger Pro that finally have up the ghost after 15 years. I was looking for these features:

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Rode out to Lookout mountain today for a little Easter Ride. It was damn near perfect, I have to do that ride again later in the spring.

Well, I went on to a little stroll today after work; and as you can see ended up doing almost 60 km. Not sure how that happened, since it was bloody cold out, but hey 

As you may have noticed by now, I really like this shop. Every sunday they do a breakfast ride, which is right down my alley: Meet in front of the shop and then ride out a few miles to a restaurant and have some nice breakfast. All on sunday morning, so there’s no traffic to speak of, and the group on sunday was really great. Definitely worth getting up one hour earlier than I do during the week.

So, I went out tonight for a few beers tonight to Charlie Browns again. I took a slightly different route this time, nifty little stroll through the evening city.