Weekend Getaway

Suffering, but happy

Thanks to a last-minute invite from Red Coat, a small chunk of the Waltworks crew headed south, away from the impending and inevitable weekend rain at home and hit both Buffalo Creek and a race in Pueblo. I was in it for a chance at Buffalo Creek, a little early season camping and some good company. Saturday's ride nearly did me in, but, behind the grimace, I was still having a really great time. Thanks to Eszter, RC and Chris for waiting patiently for me at every fork in the trail and not letting me get lost in the eerie, post-fire landscape. Can't wait to get back there with functioning front suspension, which is unfortunately missing on my bike right now.

As for the race, I was happy to pull support duty, carting excess clothing (yay for southern sunshine!) and snapping pictures from the side of the end of the course. Seems I missed out on lots of fun turns and encounters with local spiny flora, but I'll save them for another day. My race season doesn't start till I feel like something outside of the land mollusk family - maybe late May, early June?

Still smiling...

even after...thirty miles.

It was a happy reminder of what summer is for and I think one of the initial planning emails said it best...let's ride bikes!

Reasons to like this Tuesday

1. It's seventy-something degrees
2. The air smells nice
3. It's free cone day at Ben and Jerry's
4. It's $1 slice day at Cosmo's
5. VG Burgers has magically reappeared at the corner of Broadway and Arapahoe
6. Coasting east on Nelson as the sun sinks ever lower
7. Tons of larks, one beaver/muskrat and many rehydrated peeper frogs on the way home
   

Hooky

Me = Honorary Sun Employee?

So, by Saturday afternoon I was feeling sick (of work) and already dreading Monday morning. I was also checking the weather reports and looking longingly at the predicted snowfall for certain nearby resorts. I've only taken out my board for the yurt trip and Crested Butte this year, but that's two times more than last year, and I was reminded both times how much I love my snowboard. It's that great feeling of flying and floating at the same time, and the only similarity I've found is smooth, rolling singletrack.

I gave up buying season passes years ago when I got sick of the crawl in the car on 70 and single day passes on site are outrageously expensive, but I'm a chairlift addict and have no backcountry skills, so I needed to find a more reasonable way to get back to the slopes one last time. Fortunately, as the ski season winds down, there are plenty of folks out there with spare lift tickets to unload. Thanks to Craig's List and a nice Sun employee in Erie, I was able to have the ticket in hand in about thirty minutes and for $30 less than the window price. Yay for impetuous decisions and the internet!

Well, the promised storm fizzled out Sunday afternoon, but I was more than happy to deal with spring conditions (heavy powder to puddles, depending on the hour and the trail). I had a millisecond of guilt as I called in this morning, but I'm over it. I got to hang out by the Pioneer lift in the morning, enjoying the quiet, untracked trails after the slogging it took to get over there, and then worked my way over to the Mary Jane side for the rest of the day. Mary Jane has always been a turn-off for me due to my dislike of bumps and tight trees, but the bowl at the top is worth the effort and they've moved enough trees apart (really, I hope they didn't do that) for tired people like me to come back down. It was cool to look down from the lifts at all the animal tracks from the night before - sure looked like big cats to me.

After the day was done, I resolved to look into new boots for the next season. That's a good sign because I've had my black patent leather boots for ten years and if I'm looking to upgrade, that must mean I'm ready to participate in winter with a little more consistency. For now, though, I'm ready to let it go. After all, if a butterfly floats by your table while you're having lunch at a ski resort, mountain bike season can't be far behind, right?

OK, where are the bike trails?