there is a man made waterfall right at the entrance to the canyon.

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another view of the fall.

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as i was riding away i thought the over head water bridge was pretty cool looking.

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right before the enterance to the big thompson canyon, there are a lot of “camps”. there are at least two christian camps, a girls camp, cowboy camp… and a few mysterious ones like the picture below:

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one love store

i don’t know why i thought this was so neat, but there was this hippie store in love, with this big neon heart and arrow.

Darn bike path. I kept running into these little clouds of small flying bug. i couldn’t see them because it was so dark. i just kept my head down, and my mouth closed. this is me at 5:30am.

after the bike path.

… minutes i should be out of here. it’s so dark outside right now. it doesn’t feel cold right now either. i read that it was going to be windy up at the top.

and i forgot my fig newtons and gator aid…. what the hell did i go for? now i have to make the powder stuff. i should be in bed soon, i was planning on leaving my house at 5:15am.

i just checked google maps. it is only 33 mile from my house to estes park and 50.5 miles from my house to trail ridge road. that’s not bad. if fall river road is closed, i can take trail ridge which would add another 8 miles to the distance. i wonder what the elevation gain is…. trail ridge visitor center is 1179ft. i am at 4993… so that is only 6803ft or 1.3 vertical miles.

:)

till tomorrow

so many things to do for my big trip tomorrow. i spent most of the day trying to figure out how to import my blogger blog over to wordpress …. but no luck. i decide to give up around 11am. then i had to pick up the kids from their various sleep overs. when i was a kid i never had a sleep over. in fact i didn’t have a “sleep over” till college. but that’s another story. i spent the rest of the day working on my kid’s car.

so here it is about 6:30 and i have to prepare for my big trip tomorrow. i figured since i was bringing my bianchi it was going to be a slow heavy ride. if there is anything i learned about slow heavy rides…. don’t try to hurry! i’m bringing both panniers filled breakfast, lunch, and rain gear :) bet you thought i was going to say dinner huh? since i was going to be passing some stores up in estes park i thought about just buying what i needed, and not carry so much. however, what i noticed, is that i usually buy food and drinks impulsively. sometimes i’l buy crap like ice cream, or candy bars because they look so good when i’m undernourished. it’s easy to resist buying these when healthy options are available, but when the store doesn’t have anything fresh or healthy, it’s easy to lean toward the crap. also, what usually happens, is that i need something besides water, so i’ll find gator aid or power aid…. and it’ll be two for one! two for one, do you know what a good deal that is? so i’ll half drink one, and put the rest in my water bottle.. and the other one goes in my other pannier. and i have to carry the savings with me the whole rest of the trip.

so i’m going to bring what i really need with me… and buy the craving food when i get up there. i’ll bring a couple of sandwiches or burritos, really good chips, a couple of bars of string cheese, an avocado, and some fig newtons. it seems like a lot of food…. but there is nothing worse than bonking. well. i guess there are a few things worse than bonking… like heat exhaustion or hypothermia. let’s hope none of that happens.

i think i’m leaving my ipod at home this time… don’t want to carry it up the hill. i’ll just sing or hum to myself… that should work, as long as no one is near by.

we’ll next week is my birthday, and i finally decided what i am going to do. i am going to ride from my house in loveland up to old fall river road and then climb up ofrr to the visitor center and back down trail ridge… then back to loveland. don’t know the millage yet, nor do i care so much. old fall river road is quite the bear to climb as it is, let alone after a ride up the thompson canyon.

i’ve got lots of preparing to do.. this is going to be tough.

bringing the old bianchi with the panniers, of course.

fun run

i ran a race yesterday. it was only a 5k. i haven’t been running at all so i was pretty happy with the results. i think i ran twice in august, and 5 times in july.

here are some pictures

me holding up a tree

starting

done! 20:40 with a walking/jogging 1/2 mile start.

the bike parts for my project have been coming in very regularly now. i only have two more orders left. the big one is the order with the wheels. the other order has the seat post which is not a big deal, and the brake cables which is a really big deal.

anyway, i’ve been kind of vague when my wife asks me how much things cost… so far so good. when this thing is done it’ll be pretty sweet… i hope.

i have a description of how i put together the headset, i’ll post it tonight.

later