Parades and Paradoxes

Parades and Paradoxes

Rejuvenated after an evening hanging with our wives, we set out early the next morning for what we knew would be the flattest and least scenic our five-day ride. Only 70+ miles stood between us and Brennan's front door, but it is never that easy, right? Wrong. Today it was that easy. Flat, relatively little wind, mostly paved roads, and bike trails for the last 15 or so miles into Denver. This last day reminded me a lot of our rides through Indiana with wheat replacing the corn as we rolled past farm after farm, and crossed upwards of 15 sets of railroads tracks. 

Once we hit the outskirts of Denver, fatigue of the four arduous days before began to weigh down our legs, and our pace slowed, but never stopped…just keep pedaling. We rolled through REI's Outdoor Festival, and with music blasting and cyclists surrounding us we pressed on the last few miles to arrive at a house with...wait for it...no one there. Costello and Amy had beaten us to Denver, and decided to wait for us at the library a few blocks away. Sarah and Haley had gone to the New Belgium Brewery that morning, so their ETA was to be determined, but it only took one phone call to find out that our proud wives were only minutes away with a growler of Rolle Bolle (New Belgium's summer seasonal) ready to celebrate with us. Although it was not the climactic greeting that we had hoped for (with streamers, TV stations, parades, and fountains of beer), it more than sufficed for our tired bodies and thirsty mouths. Ride number four was in the books, and, with the help of our stalwart sherpa Costello, we made it through another year without any major injuries or incidents. 

As we looked back on this year's ride it was inevitable that we would see where it ranked with all of the others. We have loved (and loathed) all of the rides for different reasons, but we began to make a distinction between them. There were rides that were good because the ending place/events were amazing, and that would be our rides from Cincinnati to Chicago - where we ended at Wrigley Field watching the Reds dismantle the Cubs on a gorgeous 4th of July weekend - and from Houston to New Orleans - where many of our friends met us for an unforgettable weekend in the Big Easy. However, when it comes to the actual miles on the bike it was Kentucky and Colorado that took the cake for us. Every day the scenery was different and breathtaking. Every day the stopping points were unique and memorable. And every day the challenges were demanding and (in a way) galvanizing for us as riders and as friends. A shared experience. 

One thing is for sure, I felt more of a sense of accomplishment on this ride than any of the previous ones, and not because we reached our destination (I always knew we would, eventually, get there), but because we enjoyed the pains and pleasures along the way. As grueling as the climb up Trail Ridge Road was, the descent into Estes Park and Big Thompson Canyon eclipses all other rides on a bicycle. And when you have worked for that reward, then the primal cry you let out speeding down that mountain at 40 miles an hour echoes louder and rings truer to passers by than any roller coaster scream that can be heard in an amusement park because it is not fear but ecstasy that coursed through your veins in that moment. We rode along side antelopes and elk and cattle and marmots, and they were goodly enough to ignore our intrusion long enough that we felt like we belonged on those dirt roads in Northern Colorado. 

The last day of riding on this trip is always a bit of a paradox: part of me is ecstatic that I don't have to get up at 6:45 and ride 70 plus miles, over unfathomable rock formations, on questionable terrain, in whatever weather gets thrown at us; the other part of me is devastated that I know what my day will bring (for the most part) and that I don't get to explore parts of the country I've never seen before in that most vulnerable state of exhaustion and awe for another year. But alas, the moustache has been shaved, the legs (and liver) are recuperating, and real world descends upon us again. 

Day Five: I'm At the Scuba Shop...I'm at the Barbershop...I'm at the Combination Scuba Shop and Barbershop

Start: Ft. Collins, Colorado
Lunch: Carbon Valley Coffee Roasters in Frederick, Colorado
Dinner: Punch Bowl Social in Denver, Colorado
End: Brennan and Haley apartment in Denver, Colorado
Today's biking distance: 72 miles
Total biking distance: 339 miles

Our final day was about as simple as it gets: less than 80 miles in a straight line to Brennan's apartment back in Denver. Amy was my co-sherpa, and the other wives, Haley and Sarah, decided to kill time at New Belgium Brewery while the guys did the real work biking to the finish line.

Our lunch stop was in Frederick, Colorado. There were two interesting things in this small town. First, there was a combination scuba and barber shop (not to be confused with a combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell). The second was what looked like some sort of chainsaw wood carving competition. We would have loved to stick around and taken the blue ribbon (or gotten a haircut specifically catered to my scuba mask), but we had a Denver to get to!

When the guys arrived, we celebrated with some, you guessed it, New Belgium Rolle Bolle, got cleaned and showered up, and headed out for a celebratory dinner, along with our pal Sas!

This trip included many firsts for the moustaches rides:

• first significant elevation gains
• first motel room with three beds (finally!)
• first trip with the wives joining
• first trip-themed t-shirts!
• first dashcam footage (here's my hour-long drive on Trail Ridge Road, compressed into a 3-minute video):

What will the 5th moustache ride add to the illustrious history of this annual trip? Only time will tell.

In the meantime, don't forget to check out all of the pictures from this year's trip at our Flickr page.

Until next time...

Day Four: WyNOming

Start: Loveland, Colorado
Lunch: some dude's front yard in Buckeye, Colorado
Dinner: Coppersmith's Pub & Brewery in Ft. Collins, Colorado
End: Hilton Garden Inn in Ft. Collins, Colorado
Today's biking distance: 72 miles
Total biking distance: 267 miles

The plan to was to quickly head up to the Wyoming border, tag it, and return to Ft. Collins, where the moustaches wives would be waiting (a moustache ride first!). But bike-unfriendly roads dashed that plan, and so the guys sketched a quick detour while we met up for a water break at Forks, which sadly, was not the fork museum I was hoping for (apparently we'll have to take the moustache ride to South Korea if we want that).

a very deceiving sign

Jason and Brennan quickly plan a reroute. Sorry, Wyoming.

Luckily, the ride became a pretty picturesque trek through rolling hills, farms, and lakes. I was also able to finally stop on the side of the road to get some pictures of the guys while riding. I also took a picture of a cow who stood up and mooed at me. It was scary.

See that black cow on right? It's in the process of getting up to moo at me. See how scary it looks?!

We had settled on a town we saw on the map, Buckeye, for our lunch stop. Turns out Buckeye, Colorado isn't much of a town. It barely has shade, let alone restaurants. I was able to ask permission to eat our lunches in a front yard from the owner of the one house in Buckeye. The chickens weren't too happy with us, but the shade was much appreciated!

After that, we were all excited for our stop for day four, the New Belgium Brewery! Some may recall that the 2010 Moustache Ride through Indiana involved a brewery stop each night, so this was of course right up our alley. I sped ahead to get our name on the waiting list for tours, and true to form, the guys showed up about 10 minutes before we were called to check out the massive operation there. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Off all the places I've had to sit and wait for the guys to arrive, the New Belgium Brewery tasting room is by far my favorite!

here's the front of the huge brewery (its campus is quite impressive)

While waiting, I watched other patrons play a game (and namesake of this year's summer ale), Rolle Bolle. It's sort of like bocce ball with wooden disks that look like cheese wheels.

Arrival to the brewery!

Hey! New Belgium stole my wife's Christmas-lights-in-beer-bottles idea!

That's some quality Fat Tire coming your way soon!

Needless to say, it was amazing, especially the end, which involves a slide!

We then met up with our wives, who are incredibly understanding and tolerant of our facial hair escapades each summer. We hit up Coppersmith's for dinner, took in some Ft. Collins people-watching, and then settled in for the final day of the trip...back to Denver!

from left to right, Jason's wife Sarah, Brennan's wife Haley, Brennan, Ryan's wife Amy, and Ryan

Keeping It Simple

Keeping it Simple

Our original plan was to ride from Loveland to the Wyoming border. We chose a route that (we thought) would be bike-friendly. 90 miles from Loveland to the border to New Belgium Brewery in Ft. Collins, and our prize was a tour and free beer awaiting us. 

The first hour took us into Ft. Collins and past the Horsetooth Resevoir - short very steep climbs with fantastic descents with beautiful scenery to boot. We then began our slow ascent into the foothills and northern Colorado border mountains. The roads; however, were less than desirable, and once we got almost 40 miles into the road, I could no longer hold back my objections. Semis racing past at 70 mph while we hugged what little shoulder was left. That was not for us. We decided instead to do what we have traditionally done when the route chosen did not meet with our expectations…change it up. 

We decided to take another route, Wyoming would have to wait for another year to be graced by these staches. We turned off the main road and onto a county road with only a number to identify it. Gravel. Now we had endured this situation before (in Kentucky and Indiana), but we had never started down a road that wasn't paved to being with. However, we did see pavement a mile ahead. That pavement last approximately 200 yards before turning back into gravel, but we weren't turning back. This turned out to be the best decision of the day. Not one car passed us from behind and only three oncoming cars came by in the 10 miles we were on the un paved road. Sure, we had to take the downhills a bit slower, but check the pics, and see if tour decision didn't yield the most breath-taking ten miles of the day.

After the road turned back to pavement, we found Costello posted up on a small farm under a shady tree. That shady tree along with some store bought sandwiches and leftovers served as our lunch for today. We watched chickens strut around the yard as we dined and planned the last 25 miles of the route. Simple is good. 

We rode into Ft. Collins, having to take one a brief break to fix my flat tire. But we would not be denied what was to be the crown jewel in the trip…a stop a New Belgium Brewery in Ft. Collins. Ride bike. Ride on fun road. Take in beautiful scenery. Drink good beer. Keepin' it simple.

Day Three: Missed Connections

Start: Grand Lake, Colorado
Lunch: Grubsteak in Estes Park, Colorado
Dinner: Sports Station in Loveland, Colorado
End: Super 8 in Loveland, Colorado
Today's biking distance: 77 miles
Total biking distance: 195 miles
Today's elevation gain: ~4,000 feet

Total biking elevation gain: ~10,334 feet

While Brennan and Jason had perhaps their most impressive day of riding ever, I was not on my game. I missed Jason on our first break at the top of Trail Ridge Road. I missed both of the guys when I was supposed to meet them just below the tree line to take their extra layers. Thankfully, I was able to meet them at the stop for the night, a Super 8 in Loveland, Colorado.

Today's grueling trek up the highest paved road in the US is much better left to Jason, who rode it and tells the tale here. Otherwise, enjoy a few snapshots along the way, as well as a 3-minute video that shows my perspective of the breath-taking views from the support vehicle's dash cam:

lunch stop in Estes Park

That WAS Awful...I mean Awesome!

That WAS Awful…I mean Awesome!

Wow! I really don't know what to say about today. I have never exerted myself more physically or questioned myself more mentally than I did in the first four hours of today's ride. No music today just us and the mountain. (It was not that we were trying to be tough, we couldn't get our iPhones updated to put the new music on and we had cleared the old songs off.) 

Any endurance athlete - runner, swimmer, cyclist, etc. - will tell you that it is the little things that will make or break the ride: you must have comfortable and working equipment, it helps when the conditions are good (low wind, no rain, mild heat), and you have to approach each mile like you did the last. When we set off, I had a slight headache and some heavy legs, but the weather was perfect this morning and our surroundings were an Ansel Adams picture. Conditions were good, surroundings were great, comfort was as to be expected after two days of riding. 

As we enter Rocky Mountain National Park, the mantra that would ring throughout the day was echoed for the first time: "This is awesome!" We climbed together for the first 13 of what would be a 27 mile climb before we finally descended for good. As our climbing paces began to separate us, we decided to break about halfway up the climb…roughly six miles. After about five, we stopped and took some pics, having climbed up to about 10,000 feet from our 8,300 foot start. 

Now, it was at this point that some 300-pound know-it-all decided to tell us that according to his watch, which included an altimeter, we were at 11,000 feet, and that the climb was quite easy once we got around the next switchback. That bastard. We both wanted to believe him, knowing that it was a difficult first six miles, but what the rest of the climb had in store we could not have predicted. As we ascended higher guardrails and traffic became sparse, and each turn (though it brought us closer to the top) crushed our mindsets, looking steeper and longer than the one before. 

Switchback after switchback we climbed, at different paces, on our own. I knew that the plan was to meet at the Visitor Center, which I thought was at the peak of the road. As I passed a visitor center (which happened to be the only visitor center), I decided to keep climbing because the hill kept going, and I didn't see our trail car in the parking lot.. That quarter-mile stretch between the Visitor Center and what I thought was the top of the road was straight into a 30-40 mph wind, along a road with no guardrails. I rode the center and plugged away in my lowest gear. Standing up for the last 50 yards or so, puffing my chest out in triumph, I saw the road begin to turn and go up again for what seemed like eternity, and my spirits were crushed. I pedaled into the pull off, the magnificent view escaping me, and hung my head. With the wind gusting, the sweat from my climb chilling me, and my fingers numb, I tried to look at the positives; they were few. Soon Costello came rolling up in the car to save my psyche, and Brennan soon followed, having been battered by the same hills, and that same pelting wind. I wasn't sure at this point that I wanted to go on. What did I get myself into? This is awful.

But against everything that my mind and body were telling me at that point, we pressed on. I would venture to say that Brennan's mind and body were tempting him not to continue as well, but we weren't about to let logic or reason stop us at this point. We were pummeled by the wind for the next half hour as we reached the top of the road and meandered across the tops of the peaks, taking in the beautiful view when we weren't trying to keep ourselves from being blown off the mountain. And then it happened…the descent.

We rode roughly 27 miles up hill, and now we were ready to free fall for the next 50. All of those beautiful landscapes that we could enjoy on the slow climb to the top flew by as our hands and forearms grew sore from squeezing the breaks. The first 27 miles had taken us three hours, and the next 18 took us less than one. When we could glance off of the road for a moment to recognize our surroundings, "This is awesome," would ring our from one or both of us, as it was clear that the reward was well worth the effort. 

Lunch and then more of the same 2500 more feet of descent. More wind blasted our faces, as we traversed the canyon between Estes Park and Loveland, but the downhill grade allowed us to keep a nice pace, completing the last 30 miles in about 90 minutes. 

Pulling into the parking lot of the motel, I realized that they only part of the ride that is under my control is my mental state, pushing to keep me going. Along the way there will be things that boost that mental state (like conversation and camaraderie in the difficult parts of the ride - thanks Brennan), and there are things that will kill your mental state (like unsolicited advice from ignorant bystanders and a strong wind holding you up). The trick to getting through is to remember why you grew the moustache in the first place: to experience the country in a way that most people never will, to hang out with friends doing something you enjoy, and to get to the peak/meal/beer that wait when you reach that proverbial (or literal) finish line. Today was awesome!