Kiki Bikes Across America

Archive for July, 2009

Sunday, July 12th – Pitkin/Ohio City, CO

Today we’re just hanging out in Ohio City. We had to switch cabins from Pitkin to Ohio City this morning, so we packed up and then rode our empty bikes down 5-6 miles to Ohio City to the new cabin here. It’s really modern with outstanding furniture and low, sagging, crooked ceilings. It’s quite fancy if you ask me. The sign outside said it’s a “modern cabin” – I guess by Colorado standards. It’s nice though – beats sleeping in a tent and having to pack up a wet tent in the morning.

Anyway, we’re heading off to Gunnison this afternoon to run errands and find internet and explore a little. We also want to find a Utah state map so we can try to plan our route a little now. We’ll be heading out tomorrow again on the bikes though, so maybe I’ll have some updates later this week whenever I find internet again or cell phone reception. Right now, Ohio City and Pitkin are complete dead zones.

Saturday, July 11th – Salida, CO to Pitkin, CO

I got up about 7:30 this morning, ate a little breakfast and rolled out after Mike returned from a quick dog walk. I stopped by Safeway to pick up a banana and a banana and strawberry smoothie. I got on the road by 9am and started the slow and long climb from Salida to Monarch Crest at 11,312 feet. The grade was 6% and fairly steady most of the way. I passed another two cyclists (Dwight and Brent) coming down Monarch Pass and we stopped and talked for a bit. They’re from CA and are riding to Yorktown, VA and plan to arrive by August 9th. They’re racing across the country pretty fast as they’ve got a sag vehicle and are on a time limit with their vacation.

I continued on up the mountains slowly, doing anywhere from 4-7 mph depending on the steepness and the wind. I stopped a few times to drink or snack on a peanut bar but didn’t really have much of a problem with the altitude. I thought it might be a bit tougher with lugging all the weight up the mountain and the oxygen becoming less, but it really wasn’t too bad. I was definitely happy to reach the top at 3 hours and 30 minutes later (riding time, that is). Just at the top, I was getting my stuff together and a guy gets out of a pickup truck and says “Are you Kiki?” – so I was caught off guard there and slightly puzzled. Turns out, it was Chase – he had come to look for me and see if he ran into me on the road, and so I went into the gift shop and got a hot dog and cheetos and then ate real quick and rode down the other side of the mountain to Sargents. At this point, the rain had started slightly and it was pretty cloudy, and since Chase had come all that way to look for me, I figured I’d just hitch a ride back with him and go with him and his parents to Tin Cup for a little music thing at Frenchy’s. So Chase stopped at Sargents to pick me up so I threw my bike in and bags and we headed back to Pitkin where his mom and dad were waiting.

After the climb up Monarch Pass

Off we went to Tin Cup – I drove the pickup over the bumpy and rocky road 21.5 miles to Tin Cup over Cumberland Pass. It took 1 hour and 4 minutes to get there. Once there, we listened to live music on the deck of Frenchy’s and had some food. Another long drive back to Pitkin over the pass (1 hr 10 minutes this time) and we got back and Chase had his birthday cake (his birthday is really July 16th next week, but his family was celebrating since they’re here with him now). So we had french vanilla cake with french vanilla icing – pretty yummy and we pigged out. Finally to sleep around 10:30 or 11pm…

GPS Stats (from Salida to Sargents):
33.8 miles
8.7 avg speed
45.9 max speed
03:53 moving time

Computer Stats:
34.57 miles
9.0 avg speed
47.0 max speed
03:49:46 moving time

I was driven 28.8 miles in the pickup truck from Sargents to Pitkin.

Today and the past couple of days I have met lots of really interesting people – it makes me want to stay here and keep talking to the locals and the others passing through.

If you talked to me, please drop me a line at kiki@transamericancyclist.com as you may have given me some contact info, but I may have lost it. But regardless, I’d love to hear from anyone who I have met along my journey – so please drop me a line.

Wednesday:

• Met Mike at the library – very cool person and we’ve hung out for three days now. He’s led me up my first 14er, Mt. Elbert, and I’m now hanging out with his dog Cal while he’s at a drag racing event in Denver.

Thursday:

• Met Andy and Veronica when climbing Mt. Elbert – hope you guys will drop me a line or find me on facebook. I have more pics of you guys if you want me to email them to you.
• Met Wilderness Bob on the trail as we were hiking down – he’s hiking the continental divide this year and has hiked many other long trails as well. Hope to hear from you if you find yourself near internet before you forget about bumping into me and Mike on the trail.

Friday:

• Met some really interesting folks (Michael and Jane) outside of the library today as I was leaving. They were curious about the cal cruiser and were checking it out. Their son is a professional climber and only 23 years old! I unfortunately already forgot his name.
• Met Steve down by the river who’s traveling around a bit now and doing some dirt-biking, kayaking, and mountain biking. He’s apparently quite a traveler and has for the past 15 years or so traveled for 3+ months every year. He’s doing Asia and South America and lots of other places – a lot of traveling by dirt bike. Sounds very fun and interesting.
• Met another couple tonight down by the skate park with their kids – Bill Smith and Jen Orr, I believe their names were. They told me they have a friend (Lael or Laer?) in San Francisco that I should look up – I hope I didn’t lose the paper they wrote it on, but if I did, I hope they’ll contact me (kiki@transamericancyclist.com).
• And lastly, I’ve been sitting at the Simmering Cup Coffee House and have had a nice time chatting with the owners, Doug and Delinda Crinklaw. They’re from Colorado originally, he’s from Grand Junction, and she from Durango area.

So as you can see, I’ve met a lot of really cool people thus far in the past couple of days since being on my own and here in Salida. I really like it and wish I could stay longer, but unfortunately need to crawl up the Monarch Pass and on to Pitkin so I can meet Chase before he wonders what happened to me! I was supposed to be there Thursday, then I told him Friday, and now it’s going to be Saturday before I get there.

Friday, July 10th – Hanging with Cal in Salida, CO

So after climbing the 14er yesterday, I decided why not stay another day in Salida – it’s nice here, the people are really cool… there’s lots to do and plenty of relaxing to do as well. Needless to say, Mike was cool with it – he’s off to Denver today to see some drag-racing and he needed to figure out what to do with Cal (his black lab), so I’m hanging out with Cal today and going to go check out some mountain biking here too.

Mike and Cal

Meanwhile, we’re just hanging out and I’m going to go ride on back to Mike’s and swap bikes and go for a short mountain bike ride up the trails.

Me and Cal

Tomorrow, I have to ride up to Pitkin and meet up with Chase… no more delaying:)

I did a little mountain biking on the trails Mike suggested – granted, I don’t know which trails I really did, but it was a nice change anyway to ride a mountain bike. I also played with Cal for a bit at the lake and he chased the tennis ball as I threw it into the lake. Then I grabbed dinner at the Boathouse and ice cream at the Simmering Cup Coffee House, which is awesome! Tonight I had a double scoop of smores ice cream in a waffle cone and Cal hung out with me here for a bit while I used the wireless to do more photo uploading.

Me and Mike's mountain bike

Thursday, July 9th – Salida, CO

Today was a bit different – I didn’t ride anywhere, I instead found myself climbing a 14er, Mt. Elbert with Mike who I met yesterday at the library. He offered to let me crash at his place in his spare room, but we found ourselves camping out at the base of the trailhead to Mt. Elbert last night. We got up at 6:45am this morning and made oatmeal and then hit the trail around 8 or shortly thereafter.

It was a grueling hike for someone not acclimated to the altitude and who is just recovering from being sick a week ago. However, I was determined to make it and so I did. The hike took about 4 hours to go up (2 hrs  38 minutes of actual hiking time and 1 hr and 30 minutes or so of rest/stopped time). It was a challenge – I think the hardest physical challenge I have ever done. I can’t think of anything else that was more challenging. Biking across the country is easy compared to hiking a 14er and not being acclimated to the altitude. The lack of oxygen is really noticeable as you hike about 100 feet and then have to rest again, drink lots of water, and then continue. It was one step after the other, nice and slowly.

Along the way, we met a couple, Andy and Veronica (from Michigan and Colorado) and they were very cool, fun people. Andy owns a bicycle shop in Michigan and Veronica lives in Denver area. So we hiked with them a bit and chatted up at the summit after we arrived.

Veronica and Andy

We arrived to the summit around 12:30 or so, I think and hung out there taking photos and talking with other hikers for a bit and then headed down around 1:30. The views were absolutely stunning – amazing – unbelieveable. We were on the highest in Colorado at 14,433 feet. Info can be found here, if you are interested. The hike was 8.4 miles from the start of the trailhead up to the summit and back down (this was via the South Elbert Trail). We climbed approximately 4,000 vertical feet! I took my GPS along and tracked the entire hike, not turning it off except at the summit and when we finished.  If you want to view the track, you can see it at GPSies.com – however, the altitude is a bit off as I hadn’t calibrated the altitude on my GPS.

Me and Mike at the summit

Me and Wilderness Bob

We ran into Wilderness Bob, who’s hiking the continental divide – he started 2 or 2 1/2 months ago from the border with Mexico and is hiking north to Montana. You can follow his travels (which will be transcribed later and put online) at http://trailjournals.com/entry.cfm?trailname=8968 or go to http://www.trailjournals.com and search for “wilderness bob” to see the other journals he has for his previous hikes. He’s hiked a lot of other trails including the Appalachian Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail and tatoos each trail on his leg/thigh when he’s finished.

Wednesday, July 8th – Westcliffe, CO to Salida, CO

I’m finally back on my bike after a long break with the viral infection and going up to Denver to have some fun. I started out at 9am this morning and had only a 53 mile ride ahead of me, so knew I had plenty of time. The ride was very scenic and not too hilly – a few hills, but overall downhill, I guess. But there was wind to make up for that… I had horrible headwinds for the last 15 miles into Salida – I was crawling at 5-6mph at some points… I thought the wind would never end. Finally, I reached Salida and came to the library to do some web-updating and post photos!!! I added a good number of Colorado photos (in their own album) from the other day when I was in Rocky Mountain National Park. I saw Elk and a chipmunk was really friendly – they’re all in the album as well.

The link for the new photos is: http://picasaweb.google.com/transamericanride09/

Friday, July 3rd – Tuesday, July 7th – Hanging out in Denver

Thanks to Cindi who was ever so kind to let me borrow her car from Westcliffe, I have made it up to Denver. I got in around 4:15pm on Friday and was going to go to a cookout/BBQ with Chelsea and Russell, but it started storming really badly. So we all just waited it out at Chelsea’s – during which that time I started to get really tired and feel a bit hot, so I told Chelsea that I’d pass. Just 15 minutes or so after she left, I felt really nauseas and threw up again – everything from the bottom of my stomach. I then of course had to clean up my lovely mess and then left and went back to crash at Barbara and Dianela’s place (where I’m lucky and able to crash and sleep whenever since they gave me a spare key). So I came back and went to sleep at about 8:30pm and slept on and off the entire night. Woke up eventually for good at 8:30am (12 hrs of sleep)… and felt pretty okay.

Saturday:
I decided to take my bike to Denver Spokes to have them tune up the derailleur – which they did in no time and didn’t bother to charge for it, which was nice. I went back and then after a while went to run to Walmart to replenish supplies for my trip (Heet, soap, toothpaste, food, gatorade, all of that sort of stuff). After my Walmart run, I came back, organized a little bit and then took an hour and a half nap before heading out around 7:30 to Chelsea’s to watch the fireworks at Cheeseman’s Park. First, we had dinner at her place – her roommate’s mom (who’s in town from Ohio) made some yummy turkey burgers and corn on the cob. So I was able to eat and keep everything down which was good. I then headed back to crash for the night after the fireworks were done.

Sunday:
I got up at 7:30, showered and then ate a toasted bagel and left to meet up with Chelsea and her roommate Amanda and her dad for rafting. We headed to the river rafting place about 45 minutes outside of Denver. We got suited up in wet suits and booties and life jackets and all. It was apparently going to be a very cold ride, and indeed it was! We had a cool guide, Nick, who had been doing guided rafting adventures for 9 years now. He seemed to have a pretty good idea of how the river works and was good at giving his instructional lesson to the two newbies, as well as the rest of us. We had a lot of fun, despite the cold… but  I was still a little nervous about getting sick while on the river – luckily that didn’t happen! The ride was good – we had some nice class III and class IV rapids and none of us got tossed out of the raft. Another raft had a few get thrown out though, one lady got pretty beat up and hurt though unfortunately. They got her back in the boat and then continued down to a part of the river where they were able to get her out of the boat and onto land and then called an ambulance to take her to the hospital. She wound up coming out in the class IV rapid, I believe and landed hard on some rocks (on her back) and I think that’s where she was having most of her pain. Our guide (who’s a nurse in real life) thinks she may have broken a rib or two. So hopefully not!

After rafting, we went to have lunch in Idaho Springs, CO – just at a cafe place. Nothing to brag about – ice cream was way overpriced there in that town at $3.00/scoop and $5.00/2 scoops. I passed on ice cream.

Back in Denver, I decided to take my bike out of the car and try riding around a little to see how I felt. I felt pretty good – just tired from rafting, but otherwise good. I rode around for maybe 10 miles and went to the REI and borrowed some tire levers to rotate my tires. I had left all my tools back in Westcliffe at Sue and Lockett’s… but thought it’d probably be wise to just get the bike maintenance stuff all out of the way. So I rotated tires – putting my rear on the front and my front on the rear. My former rear tire is really worn down – I hope it makes it to the end of the trip. If it does, I’ll be happy. My chain is also wearing fast again – surprisingly… I’m not sure why it’s wearing so fast since I’ve been really careful not to cross-chain when riding and we were going thru Kansas, not up and down mountains. So I saved myself $14 by swapping my tires myself instead of having REI do it….and they were nice enough to let me do it there in the store. The only other problem with my bike currently is my front breaks squeak horribly – the Denver Spokes store did a slight adjustment and ever since they’ve been really squeaky. I may see if they can take another look and tweak it better – otherwise, I’ll probably go insane with the squeaking!

Not sure what I’m doing tomorrow – still hanging around Denver hoping that my warm weather clothes show up. Otherwise, I’ll have to stay another night into Tuesday in hopes they come. I may drive up to Boulder to check that area out – everyone says it’s really nice, so we’ll see.

Monday:
Best day of the trip – right?! Best rest day of the trip? YES. Today was a really nice day – I drove up to Boulder, did a quick drive-through and then decided not to waste time walking around Boulder, but instead to go back into the mountains where it’s scenic and pretty and take photos. I went up by Boulder Falls, but it was closed due to fallen rock, so I continued on to Rocky Mountain National Park (via Estes Park) and took a rode that followed the mountains and went past Long’s Peak. I was tempted to go hike it – as there was very little snow left and one guy said he didn’t even need his crampons to finish the top. But the ranger said it would take 12 hours, so I decided against that idea, since I wasn’t at all prepared for such a hike anyway. It will be nice to try someday though!

I got into the park around 2-3pm after picking up some chicken and more gatorade at Safeway in Estes Park. I drove back to one of my favorite places, Sprague Lake. I was there 10 years ago and remember it still and have a photo of the lake that’s one of my favorites. So I walked around the 1/2 mile path and took some photos and saw a curious chipmunk who crawled up on my shoe and then my leg…he was way too tame! I then drove further into the park and took lots of photos, saw some Elk (about 10-15 feet from me) and ended my drive at the Alpine Visitor Center (where Mopsie got sick 10 years ago with her altitude sickness).

Elk in Rocky Mountain National Park

I met a couple there from Virginia who said they had a family friend whose daughter was also biking across the country (solo) and I gave them my number and said if they talked to this family friend to pass my info on. Maybe I’ll run into their daughter on the ride – but no telling if she’s ahead or behind me or even on the same route now (to San Francisco) or if she’s heading to Oregon.

Me in RMNP just above the Alpine Visitor Center

So I took lots off photos and missed having dinner with Chelsea, as I was too caught up in the scenery and couldn’t get cell reception to call her… so she probably thought I died. I finally got out of the park and back to Estes Park around 8pm or so and then drove on back to Denver for the night. I downloaded photos and conked out about 11:45pm…

Tuesday:
Got up and ran lots of errands – got my bike re-tuned (the brakes were squeaking like crazy), met Chelsea for lunch, got a tune-up on myself (chiropractor), and then picked up my mail that Torey sent with my warm clothes and lots of jelly belly sport beans!!!

I drove back to Westcliffe, arriving around 7pm or so and then returned Cindi’s car and she drove me back to Sue and Lockett’s and then I had to start the massive reorganization and packing of all my stuff. I got everything packed away again and finally hit the sack at 12:45am… to wake up at  7am tomorrow!

Wednesday, July 1st & Thursday, July 2nd – Rest days in Westcliffe, CO

I just hung around at Sue and Lockett’s in Westcliffe trying to rest and get over my viral infection. Went to town on Thursday and walked around and  took a couple photos of the clouds. Chris and George biked in Thursday evening and stayed in the garage at Sue and Lockett’s and then had breakfast Friday morning before departing to continue their journey.

I’m hoping to head to Denver for the weekend as long as I feel better.