Creede - Lake City, CO - Big Mountains, Small Towns.

June 28, 2022

Creede - Lake City, CO

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jerry witherspoonI’m thinking of you guys daily. You are going to have a DILLY of a post-tour depression when you get home. Unless, dear Kelly, you’ve become the bicycle version of the Flying Dutchman!

Spoon
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2 years ago

Oren and I would have left earlier, but we had to wait for our included breakfast. It was excellent, moving to first place in the breakfast contest this trip. There was homemade egg and sausage casserole. A bread pudding with blueberries. An excellent selection of fresh fruits. Oatmeal. A couple of types of cinnamon rolls. I think we were well fueled for the day.

Jacinto's patched tire was flat again. When he checked the tube, it was a hole on the inside. From a spoke? He had trouble with that last year. When he had to send the wheel back to Rodriguez to fix the Rohloff, Jacinto mentioned the flat tire/spoke problem. When he got the wheel back, the problem never reappeared. BUT, he just had the wheel rebuilt. There's a new rim strip on there, and the problem is back. We ended up cutting up the old tube, and using a strip of that as a rim strip. It worked for the day. Hopefully it will continue to work?

Oren was packed and ready to leave after breakfast. I helped Jacinto with his tire, and left about 45 minutes after Oren. Jacinto was a couple more hours behind. That didn't matter for the man with legs.

There was road construction right outside of town. I got caught in the one way for at least 15 minutes. It was about a mile long, they had to wait for me to get all the way through before allowing the next lane of traffic. They were paving another section.

We had 18 gradually climbing miles to Freeman's Store. They didn't have a single customer today. I wondered if they were open. The sign out front said open at 8 AM. Hmm. Two miles later, the real climbing started. My legs were surprised. Climbing? What is this? We've been riding flat for days and days.

I found the initial climb to the false summit to be the most difficult. I gave all of the gears a thorough work out. I was having trouble with the gears. I wonder if it had something to do with us taking the rear wheel off/on when we fixed that flat. It didn't seem to matter which gear I wanted, much grinding was involved. I tried checking the tension on the cable near the chain stay and tried adjusting accordingly. It wasn't very successful. Oren said he would help me later.

Most of the road has been repaved since we rode this last. That is a very good thing, as the frost heave cracks were wide and painful to go over. We agreed that traffic was extra light today. As much as ten minutes would go by without a car. It was delightful!

The Creede side of the passes had pine trees. I would estimate at least half of the pine trees were dead. Beetle kill? The Lake City side had aspen trees.

I knew there was a false summit. Then Spring Creek, then the Slum. Today was all about climbing. Jacinto has been looking forward to it for days. He has mentioned several times that we would be out of practice for climbing, and the day would hurt.

I ate three Perpetum tablets, and an apple. I was feeling pretty good as I approached the Slum. It's 30 miles to get there - let's get this baby done! The first mile was easy. I shouldn't have been so confident. The second mile was steeper/more difficult. Thankfully, the last couple of miles eased off. The top of the pass looked very different. Previously the trees were right up next to the road and were all alive. Now, both sides of the road were clear cut, if that's the correct term. It's very wide, and open the entire distance.

I could feel some rain, and the cars approaching me had rain on their windshields. A man in an old beat up pick up gave me a thumbs up, and yelled out the window that I was almost there.

When I reached the top, it was raining and trying to grapple. I took a quick photo and kept moving.

I didn't especially enjoy the downhill, it was far too steep for fun. I did appreciate that the pavement was fresh and smooth. That made the downhill easier. It was marked as 7% for five miles. I was counting down the miles. Then there was ANOTHER, identical sign. I was ready to get to town.

As I got closed to town, a group of 8-10 OHV (off highway vehicles), pulled out in front of me. They are sure noisy. There were many of them driving around town. That must be the new thing. I am conflicted. On one hand, they get people outside. But, the noise!

Oren had written and asked if I was okay. He had been in town for an hour and there was a plumbing problem with his cabin. The end of that story is that we are now sharing a cabin. I had reserved the big cabin with two bedrooms so we could spread out. We had room to add Oren in, no problem.

Jacinto rode in just as we got that straightened out. It was 4:30. Dinner is at 5! We agreed that he and Oren would ride to the grocery, on the opposite end of town. There aren't many restaurants here, and they are busy, and slow. We did end up going to dinner, but have enough food for most of tomorrow. Jacinto said it's a bad idea to shop when you're hungry, because everything looks good.

I'm sure that we hungry cyclists can eat a lot of food on our day off tomorrow.

It's 7:30 and I"m ready for bed. Jacinto and Oren were in the kitchen, eating chips and salsa. It's been almost an entire hour since dinner! Are they hungry already?

Today was a hard day, but it was a good day. This is one of my favorite rides in Colorado. It's been too many years since we've ridden this road.