Ride on 8-31-08

My friends and I had planned this ride for several days, and still, our plans were not entirely final. It’s Labor Day Weekend, known around Colorado Springs as the time for the annual Hot Air Balloon Festival. I always liked this event, as balloonists from all around converge on the park in the center of town, and weather permitting, launch all at once to a great view. This morning, as I rode over to my friends, I could see the balloons off in the distance. We would be going the other way.

I stopped to fill up my gas tank, and since I was early, I bought a cup of coffee to drink while I watched the balloons off in the distance. While I waited there, another motorcycle rider stopped in to top off his tanks. I said hello, and admired his bike, a souped up Harley with flames painted on his gas tank. The rider himself was a nice enough guy who resembled the actor Billy Bob Thornton. I asked him were he was riding to today, and he told me that he was waiting for his brother to arrive there and that his brother was making the decision on where to ride. I told him our plans, to ride north to Estes Park, a good 185 miles away. Before I left, he stopped me and picked up something off the ground. “I found a penny on the ground,” he told me. “I understand I should give the found penny to a friend for good luck, so there you are.” I shook his hand and was on my way.

This ride was also an experiment to see if I could add another aspect to this record of rides. I found a cheap camera tripod, and managed to affix it to my handlebars. Then, I attached the camera to the tripod. Now I had a way to film parts of the ride. I don’t think that Martin Scorsese really has anything to worry about with my filmmaking.

We started out at about 8:15, heading north on Highway 83. We had taken that route many times before so it was nothing unusual. The weather was still a little cool from the night before, but by the time we reached Sedalia, it was too warm for jackets. After a quick break, we flipped over to Highway 85, which took us north to C470, an expressway that does a three quarter circle around Denver. Our route took us along C470 to Golden.

I was pretty familiar with the route, having taken it last Sunday, and a few weeks earlier when I rode to Blackhawk. I was offered the position of group leader, but deferred to Steve, because he has a lot of experience leading groups, while I have an exhaust pipe that kicks out black smoke. It’s probably better for me to ride closer to the back. As we approached Golden, I had the uneasy job of trying to signal to Steve when to turn and what lane we should be in. Good news is that Steve was pretty much acquainted with the route, and didn’t have any problem getting us on the right path.
From Golden, we took US 6, which morphed into Highway 119. This would take us through the mountains and canyons.

We rode through tunnels. As we all have discovered from our childhood playing with cardboard paper towel tubes and vacuum cleaner hoses, making noises through these things can be fun. Riding loud Harley Davidson motorcycles through tunnels just expands on that idea. We rode through the tunnels, and accelerated our engines just to hear the noise. It was loud.

We stopped for gas just south of Blackhawk, and then on into the gambling town to get some lunch. I discouraged our group (easily) away from the buffet that charged me an arm and a leg last time I was here, in lieu of a smaller casino and restaurant up the street. I was only ticked that the sink in the men’s room didn’t work.

After lunch, we hit the road, heading north again on 119. We took the switchbacks going up okay, but coming down, we all were a little uneasy. Slowing down on those tight turns was hard sometimes, but we got through okay.

We hit the town of Nederland, where I had taken a wrong turn last week. In the middle of town, there’s a traffic circle. Since the roads kind of spoke out from this hub in unusual directions, it’s pretty easy to take a wrong turn. Steve circled past our turn off, but knew traffic circles. If you miss your turn, there’s no problem making another circle.

From there it was 44 miles to Estes Park. We continued on our route, past Ward where I finally ended up last week, and through the roads traveling at an altitude of 9100 feet. The clouds started forming overhead, but the rain wasn’t enough to interrupt us to get the rain suit on. We did stop about 15 miles south of our destination for a quick breather and to put on any jackets we needed, but we were doing okay.

At about 2 PM, we pulled in to Estes. My camera had been working most of the time. I found that I couldn’t really see the display to know if my camera was recording or not. I found out later that many times when I hit the record button to start recording, I was actually stopping the recording! It was something I’d have to work on.

Estes Park is known for its beauty in the mountains, and wildlife that will wander through the town as if they own the place. It’s also known for a beautiful hotel, the Stanley, which was allegedly the inspiration for Stephen King’s book The Shining. The hotel is prominent in the town, and looks the way King described it, except of course, for the town that is within shouting distance of the hotel.

We wandered up to a restaurant, where we could grab a beer and some chips before we headed back down. While we were there, the ladies went to a shop two doors down that sold exquisite chocolates. They came back to our beer chips and salsa with a bag of designer candy, which I will admit, did taste quite good.

At 3 PM, we started up again, and headed down to Loveland along highway 36. A few years ago, I drove up here, and was stopped along that road when a herd of elk decided that the roadway was a good place to stop and look at the cars trying to get through. Fortunately for us, we did not run into any of the larger beasts, and our ride down the hill was pretty quiet.

In Loveland, we tried to find the Thunder in the Rockies motorcycle festival which was going on. It was around; we could tell by all the motorcycles in town; but hard to find. Besides that, we saw some dark clouds to the south of us, and felt it best to just head on home. Before we hit the expressway, we tanked up, and started out.

We decided to take the expressway home as it would be quicker, but much less scenic. The clouds were making a number of our decisions, and we had been riding for about 8 hours. We did hit some rain, but the clouds were telling us that it wouldn’t be long before we were out of it, so we just drove on through it. By the time we hit Denver, the rain had stopped, except for a few stray drops hitting us.

When we got to Castle Rock, we jumped off the expressway in lieu of Highway 83 again, this time southbound. By the time we hit our first red light in Colorado Springs, we had gone about 119 miles. All of us were a little sore from that long a stretch.

I made it home at about 7:30, and calculated out that we rode 342 miles. I now have about 18 minutes of video evidence to support that claim!