Sunday is for riding

“meet at Vindicator and Centennial, just north of the Walgreens.”  so said the email from Ed King this week, organizer of a local ride near Ute Park and fellow poster on Roadbikereview.com.  A twelve mile ride down from our friends’ home across the interstate from the Air Force Academy, passing through suburban, urban and beautiful red rock country, led me to the Walgreen’s parking lot.

A bit early.  Forty five minutes early.  A ubiquitous Starbucks beckoned at the end of Allegheny Rd and a tall skinny late later, I was only twenty minutes early, but feeling much better about it.  A Toyota Land Cruiser rolls into the parking lot with a Merlin attached.  I go over to say ‘hi’ and meet Carl, who helps folks visualize their mountain cabin dreams by rendering said dreams on the computer, complete with virtual walk-through rooms.  I ask if there was a way to render the reality of forest fires in his mockups and he laughs, ‘Don’t think that would sell well with the vendors.’ 

Soon a group of eight riders has gathered.  Dominic and Elaine own a local restaurant that has been written up in Zagat’s guides; Eric owns a furniture store that having a going out of business sale, ‘couldn’t resist selling the building’; Amy is a DoD contracter and an avid cyclist with a good sense of humor.  Eric and I chat as we head south and asks how I’m adapting to the elevation.  ‘Fine except for the climbs.’  He asks if he can call me Thor and soon we’re heading out to do some climbs.

The sign for Seven Falls says that it is three miles away, but twenty minutes down, or actually up, the road, I know this is a lie.  There isn’t any Seven Falls; there’s just this road that keeps ascending.  Alternating thrusts of 12 percent then 7 percent, then 14 percent, prevent a rhythm from developing.  It’s just about staring at the road a few feet in front of the wheel.  I glance at the wattage numbers and we’re staying constant in the upper 300’s, sometimes jumping to 500 on a steep ramp, or sprinting up to 6 mph to get around a dead deer that is only half there (the other half in the belly of a mountain lion) but smells like a herd of dead deer.

It’s just Dominic and I suffering together.  Eric is up the road a few hundred feet and I try to cross up to him, but succeed in only burning that last match.  A cool rock beckons and I totter over to it to get my breath.  Twenty minutes later, Dominic is a few hundred feet away and I get back on the bike to catch him.  We’re near the top and Eric is coming back down.  Screw it, I turn the bike and pull up with him and we hurtle down the narrow road, between the red rocks, the creek and probably under the gaze of some very stuffed mountain lion.

Later I ask Carl if the Seven Falls climb was a regular feature of their rides.  ‘No,’ he says, ‘we’ve never ridden up there.’ 

Thanks a lot for that Eric!