I spent the winter writing emails and making phone calls with two of my favorite touring buddies, Spoon and Ken. Oren joined up quickly, but we never got Harpo on board.

Others were invited and we ended up with a group of ten.

Spoon and Cal rode BRAN in early June to get some big miles in. Since Oren so kindly offered his vehicle as a support vehicle, I brought my Magic Carpet Ride, a RANS Stratus XP in Titanium. I got in four 70 mile rides and a bunch of shorter rides.

For our routing choice, I looked at what Ride the Rockies was doing this year and tried to do them one better. It's not too hard, because I'm looking for lodging/services for a very small group and they have thousands of riders.

This route took us through Telluride and Durango - two towns I haven't visited since a fully self contained tour in ~1999 at the beginning of my touring career. There was much I didn't know at the time about touring. That trip was great, but very steep on the learning curve. It would be interesting to see how that previous trip compares with this one.