"You really do look terrible."

July 1, 2016

Day Thirty-One: Hartsel Springs Ranch to Silverthorne, Colorado

The longest day, hardest day.

In an attempt to avoid riding about four miles on a busy highway, US 24, we tried a dirt road detour that ended, after 2.5 miles, at a locked gate. So we backtracked, and added five pointless miles the first thing in the morning.

As expected (and as our map warned) there was heavy traffic on US 24. The drivers of a couple of pickup trucks - with Colorado license plates, unsurprisingly -lay on their horns as they passed, which, in what was perhaps an overreaction on my part, absolutely enraged me, and caused me to be in a foul mood that lasted for most of the day.

The scenery for the next few hours in “South Park” was more of what we’d seen yesterday afternoon — otherwise pleasant enough, open vistas that were often spoiled by junk sitting on little lots. This kind of thing is of course common in rural Kentucky, where I’m from, but at least in Kentucky the lush green vegetation softens the looks of things. During this period I didn’t feel like riding, and dawdled, barely turning the pedals, as Joy rode ahead, and then stopped and patiently waited for me to catch up.

After a while the scenery improved, as the road worsened. The washboard gravel surface became so jarring that I abandoned the road entirely and rode down in the soft, sandy ditch for a while. A couple of southbound cyclists stopped and attempted to engage me in conversation, opening with “You’ve found the only good part of this road!” Unfortunately, I was in such a bad mood that all I said to them was that their best course of action would be to hire a vehicle to drive them and their bikes to New Mexico, and skip the rest of Colorado entirely.

We moved onto pavement for several miles as it started to rain heavily. I got about four miles ahead of Joy (in an unsuccessful attempt to “ride off” my bad mood), and by the time I reached the near-ghost-town of Como I was drenched from the chilly rain. Joy caught up with me and we stood under an empty building’s small overhang until the rain mostly stopped.

It was early afternoon and we still hadn’t started the big climb of the day: Up to Boreas Pass (11,482 feet) on a dirt (now mud) road. I didn’t think I could do it, but Joy convinced me that we had to go; otherwise we would be forced to camp in ultra-depressing (at least on this rainy day) Como, where the only open business was an art gallery that didn’t even sell snacks or cold drinks.

The climb up to Boreas Pass seemed to take forever. At least it didn’t rain much. Although it was hard for me to appreciate at the time, the scenery was pretty great, and there were only a few cars braving the muddy, rocky road.

We got to the top, and a tourist couple annoyed us with questions about our trip. I’d been short-tempered all day, but now even Joy was impatient, because we didn’t want to spend a lot of time at the pass as it grew colder. I’d been riding with my arm warmers, leg warmers, and rain jacket for hours, and now I added gloves. It was so, so cold on the downhill to Breckenridge. The funniest thing I saw riding down was a couple of tents near the side of the road, at around 11,000 feet. I can’t think of a less appealing camping spot. What kind of sleeping bag would you need, in order to spend a night up there in that cold?

The dirt road ended ended as we dropped into super-busy and super-touristy Breckenridge, a town that I’ve twice (now thrice) sworn I would never again ride through on a bicycle. We traveled down the main drag with all the tourist traffic for a mile or so, then turned onto the actually pretty excellent bike path system that runs through the Breckenridge-Silverthorne “urban corridor.”

We thought it was 16 miles to our motel in Silverthorne, but it ended up being five miles longer, somehow. At some point the lack of real food (or even much snack food) and water the last two days, perhaps combined with the rain and chilly temperatures, caused the worst “bonk” I’ve ever experienced, as I pedaled mindlessly the last few miles on the bike path.

We reached the motel and I was barely able to get into the lobby, where I sat glassy-eyed in a chair, as Joy checked us in, and the manager looked at me and said “You really do look terrible.” I went to our room and took a shower while Joy rode a half mile in the cold drizzle to an oh-so-conveniently-located Chipotle restaurant and brought back burritos, chips and the best guacamole I’ve ever tasted.

We were both exhausted and went to bed, and slept as soundly as we have on this trip.