Kiki Bikes Across America

Thursday, July 16th – Pa Co Chu Puk Campground to Telluride, CO

Today was grueling – we got a really late start. Decided after last night and staying up so late and the fact that it was Chase’s birthday, that we should just take it easy and I wouldn’t wake him up but instead just let him sleep till he woke up. He slept till 8:30 or so and we finally got going.

Last night we wound up just going over to another campsite and hanging out with some kids home from college/just going off to college in the Fall. We had smores with them, ate chips and cherries and drank coca cola… they fed us pretty well considering we didn’t really have a real dinner (just a bagel a piece). So we hung out till 12:30 or so in the morning and then finally called it a night and went to bed.

Downhill for 13 miles now

The ride today was pretty grueling and tiresome – 36 miles of uphill and 13 miles of downhill. The uphill from Ridgway to the Dallas Divide was about 11 miles and pretty much uphill the entire way varying steepness…just long. Once at the top it was smooth sailing all the way to Placerville but first we had to get through a bit of construction that took maybe 20 minutes or so. We stopped in Placerville and grabbed a bite to eat – we intended it to be a short stop, but again, was about an hour or so. We just grabbed some macaroni salad and carrot cake and split a bag of cheetos. Yummy and light enough to continue biking without stomach aches or anything.

Chase with his first birthday beer

We finished the ride to Telluride in 2 hours or so (it was 16 miles) and that was pretty grueling uphill… but we were very happy to arrive to Telluride. So happy that Chase had to stop immediately to get his birthday beer and celebrate, so we stopped at a bar/restaurant. Then on to find a place to camp – we went to the city park which we had been told was free to camp, but as it turned out it was $20 a site and we were feeling cheap sinc Telluride is so expensive. It’s a ritsy town for tourists to spend lots of money in. Entrees here are around $30 to start, a beer is $5, fries are $4-5, and sodas are around $2-3 depending on where you eat. So we were feeling cheap and unsure about wanting to spend $20 for a campsite… so rode up the road a bit to see if we could spot anything on the side of the road to camp. I thought the cemetary would be awesome, but Chase wasn’t digging the idea so much. We went back into town and were standing on a street corner discussing what we wanted to do when a guy (Brent) came up to us and said he recognized exactly what we were talking about (where to camp). He said he was down at the campground and just in a car with a trailer for a motorcycle, so I jumped in and asked if we could camp with him since he wasn’t pitching a tent. What a great idea – next thing we knew we were camping with him as well as Kyle, another touring cyclist who showed up just minutes later.

Kyle, another touring cyclist - he's from Berkley, California

So a fun and successful evening of free camping was had  - we hung around and talked for a short bit and then Chase and I went off in search of dinner. We wound up at this one place (very few were still open at 9:30pm)… and I got an YX sandwich on pizza bread (steak, onions, green and red peppers = amazing). It wasn’t as pricey as the other places, but still $13 for a sandwich and fries + tip. Either way, it was well deserved after a long day of uphill biking.

Chase and Brent at the campground in Telluride

Back to the campsite to crash…

GPS Stats:
51.5 miles
05:41 moving time
9.1 avg speed
35.8 max speed

Computer Stats:
52.89 miles
05:37:04 moving time
9.4 avg speed
36.5 max speed

Wednesay, July 15th – Lake Fork Campground to Pa Co Chu Puk Campground (8 miles outside of Ridgway)

We got a relatively late start again – no real surprise though. We got up at 6:15 or so and packed up, but then ran into some cyclists just before getting out of the park, so we stopped to chat. They were doing a Colorado tour for a couple weeks.

We started the slow climb up Route 50 and stopped to get good water, since we were told by a fisherman at the campground that the water would make us sick – I don’t think it would have, but who knows. I already had drank an entire 24 oz. of it that morning – I felt a little funny, but not sick. So we got fresh water just a couple miles up the road. The ride was very slow going – the first 20 miles were all uphill for the most part, but got a nice downhill just before Cimmaron. Just before arriving to Cimmaron we stopped at a general store to refill on water, but were convinced to try the pie – so we did. I had coconut cream pie with ice cream and Chase had blackberry pie with ice cream. It was delicious:) An hour later we were back on the bikes (after I had refilled my water there – which was a bad idea). the water was pretty gross – from the pipes. Really yellow and smelled bad, so I didn’t drink it. Luckily there was a place just down the road where I bought a gallon of water for $2.00 and it was tasty! No worries about bad water there…

Coconut Cream Pie! Yummy!

Another long climb after Cimmaron and we finally finished that a while later and then it was all downhill to Montrose. We stopped at the Black Canyon of the Gunnison to see if we could hitch-hike in, but the two people we asked didn’t seem interested, so we just continued on to Montrose. We got there about 1:30 and had lunch (Subway for me, Pizza for Chase). Then ran some errands – but first had to stop at the Russell Stover Outlet since we’d seen a billboard about free samples. Needless to say our 5 minute quick run in turned into more like an hour that we were there. It was amazing – lots of chocolate, cheap prices, and even Blue Bell ice cream that Chase knows from back home.

The Russell Stover Outlet in Montrose, CO

Finally on to Walmart where we stocked up on goodies and dinner stuff for the next few days and then we went behind Walmart to repack all our bags to fit the food in. And at 5:30pm we finally got back on the road to continue towards Telluride, knowing at this point there was no chance we’d make it. We made it to a campground about 8 miles outside of Ridgway and called it a day.

Campsite at Pa Co Chu Puk Campground

GPS Stats:
59.9 miles
05:28 moving time
10.9 avg speed
39.6 max speed

Computer Stats:
61.45 miles
05:25:16 moving time
11.3 avg speed
41.0 max speed

On a side note, while in Montrose, I was stopped by a couple kids…

Kids: Isn’t your bike heavy?
Me: Yes, it’s about 100-105 lbs right now.
Kids: Wow (big eyed), why are you carrying all of that?
Me: I’m riding across country.
Kids: Why would you want to come to Montrose? (with the voice implying that Montrose shouldn’t be on my route – aka, nothing there worth seeing/doing)
Me: Because it’s along my route.
Kids: What state did you start in?
Me: Yorktown, Virginia.
Kids: Wow (big eyed again). And where are you going?
Me: San Francisco, California.
Kids: Wow. You’re kind of crazy. Have a good trip.

Tuesday, July 14th - Ohio City – Lake Fork Campground (outside of Sapinero)

Today we got up about 7:30am (somehow the GPS alarm didn’t go off on time at 6:50am), but we got up and going and left the cabin after chatting with the other guys doing a small tour in Colorado. They (Gary, Adam, and John) were doing a trial-run with their mountain bike tires (massive tires) and all their Ortlieb gear. They’re basically staying as far away from civilization as possible, it seems. Doing all off-road stuff as much as possible and climbing passes by way of rocky jeep trails and such. So we chatted with them a bit and then they set off and then we set off about 9:30 this morning.

Adam's monster of a bike next to mine.

We arrived to Gunnison about 1 hour and 20 minutes later (21 miles later) and stopped for a quick ice cream (McDonald’s) and then went in search of warm-weather clothing for Chase. We went to a thrift store, a fishing/outdoors store, and Walmart. With a little luck, Chase is now decked out in camoflage (hunting gear) from the outdoors store. We also stopped at the bike shop to check our chains and they both appear to be in “Good” standing. Chase has ridden 2,400 miles on his chain and still hasn’t needed to replace it. I’ve riden maybe 800 miles almost on my chain since Springfield, Missouri. About 4 hours later and we finally got on the road again just before 3pm after having lunch at Mario’s Pizza. We both got the lunch special of a mini stuff pizza, salad/soup, and a drink.

Bighorn Sheep alongside the Blue Mesa Reservoir

We had 30 miles to go from Gunnison before we reached Sapinero. We unfortunately had a headwind the majority of the way out of Gunnison but the views were amazing. We rode along the Blue Mesa Reservoir/Lake and saw a few bighorn sheep that were grazing on the side of the road. One went up the side of the mountain which was probably at a 80 degree angle – amazing how they can walk up such steep inclines. A couple other sheep jumped across the road and then every other out of state license plate vehicle stopped to take photos, as well as about 4 motorcyclists. We kept on riding and stopped at a restroom on the side of the room and a couple traveling from NC to Wyoming stopped to chat with us for a bit. We debated as to how far we wanted to ride today and ultimately decided to stop for water at Lake Fork Campground, which is where we decided to stay for the night – it’s a nice little campground and we set up tents and then cleaned up and cooked dinner. Chase had his spaghetti and I had butter and herb pasta. Now if only we’d had something for dessert!

The sunset at Lake Fork Campground

Monday, July 13th – Ohio City, CO

Today we’re just resting and hanging out in Ohio City, CO… it’s like vacation. We don’t have to wake up until we wake up naturally – we can eat a real breakfast, and don’t have any set plans. Today’s the last day of this style of vacation. Chase promises we can start riding tomorrow, haha:) I’m completely okay with doing whatever since I’ve got a little more flexibility than he does, but we’ll still make it to San Francisco in time for him to get back to school and for me to come back to work.

I don’t miss work though (no offense). I am sort of dreading the idea of returning to work – it’ll probably be difficult since I haven’t spent 8 hours a day staring at a computer in quite some time. And I’m not used to the idea of having to sit at a desk, but I suppose all of that will come back to me come September when I’m back home.

Meanwhile, we’re trying to figure out our route across Utah and Nevada to California. Our tentative idea is something along these lines: click for map. We’d like to hitch-hike (even though it’s illegal) in Utah to avoid spending so many days biking to go off route… to hitch a ride to some of the national parks like Canyonlands and The Arches. Plus I have incentive for anyone taking us – free entrance into the parks with my National Parks Pass. So that’s our hope anyway, but we’ll have to be careful and strategic with our hitch-hiking… so we don’t get arrested! We’re also hoping to see Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado near Durango and Zion National Park in Utah and ride through Yosemite National Park in California. We’ll see – it’s a long ways we still have to go… approximately 1,500 or 1,700 if we detour to Las Vegas. Either way, we’ll see some nice parks along the way, I think!

For now, I have to sign off and get back to relaxing in the boonies of Ohio City, Colorado and hopefully getting my dirt biking lesson here shortly!

My dirtbike lesson

Tomorrow, I promise – we’ll start biking again. Who knows where our destination will be, maybe Cimmaron or Montrose. It’ll be 70-90 miles depending… but we’ll see how we feel after all our rest time.

Fun riding a dirtbike in Ohio City, Colorado

I’ve added a few videos to http://www.youtube.com/jmukikster as well as some more photos to the album, Colorado.

The Mason Gazette just published an article about my trip across the country. You can read it here: http://gazette.gmu.edu/articles/14095

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.