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