Rocky Mountain High, Colorado

After all the excitement of the previous day's celebration, we left an hour later than usual, down a long, gradual slope into a beautiful mountain reservoir surrounded by sheer cliffs, distant rises, and the sight of unfamiliar, young rock formations in the sense that they had only been carved out in the past 12 million years rather than 100 million. We stopped beside the water's edge, which is to say, a 30 foot climb down a cliff that Nick and Mike traversed to go into the lukewarm water above. Above, Andrew spotted mountain goats living on the bare fringe of those brown-reddish cliffs that I could barely make out, but they were up there, doing what goats do. Before long, I left to wind along the reservoir and stop at all the scenic points to take photographs and remember all the vistas that amazed me. And then the water stopped at a tall dam and behind it, a long, deep canyon that you could barely make out from the roadway, which slipped around the mountains in yet another marketing-worthy "S" that tests your downhill handling skills. The bottom was a scary confluence of a rocky stream and a rock wall that shrouded the roadway and gave little in the way of a shoulder. I had a Pop-Tart and courage and rode up along the part of this route that has the worst sight lines and most curves, but reaching the top gave me yet another roller-coaster descent to spin wildly and catch bugs in my teeth. And then I was still going downhill when my front wheel felt sluggish. I had front flatted, something I feared but when it happened, wasn't all that freightening except for the fact that it was a straight shot down rather than a twisted slope that would otherwise cause your wheels to slip out from under you and launch you into a tangent or a guardrail. I took off what I could and waited for the Alex and Keith who were behind and had a frame pump for me to borrow. With everything repaired, we soldiered on at a terrific pace to our lunch stop in another "blink-and-you'll-miss-it" town. I remarked to Anish that this is where we originally planned on stopping, to which he pointed out just how large the town was. And he was right, it was a single gas station / bait shop surrounded by giants bespeckled with shrubs, equal in majesty to a city sky line lit up at night. And so we left on the highway, out of one major "urban center" for yet another one, at least 8000 feet up. At the end of another exciting downhill was the real city of Montrose, the first town since Pueblo whose population exceeds its elevation. Brandt and I found the church on the outskirts of this sprawling burg, among the freshly platted streets and orange traffic cones and took naps on the concrete before Pastor Frank showed up and let us in to the cool air conditioned sanctuary. The team arrived and with my items in hand, I intended to go the aquatic center to swim or at least shower but instead went to the bike shop to buy a new tire to put on my front, which despite being all together, had seen better days over the course of 2500 or so miles. They had Gatorskins at a good price, so I bought one. The wrench there told me that the LeMond I ride is one of the best descending bikes he's ever ridden and I agreed with him. At the library I blogged about my fourth of July, believing it to be more worthy of a quick write-up than try to recreate my days since Eads, but I stopped before giving up and being distracted by a woman watching Linkin Park music videos on one side, either screening them for content for her daughter who was watching the same exact thing on the other side or making some attempt to better connect to her daughter's taste in music. It's been my experience that people on computers spent an excessive amount of time on MySpace or playing whatever games are popular now, leaving cross-country cyclists little time to blog and take care of other things, like informing their parents that they are in fact, alive. The wind had picked up and made the ride back a little slow. And then it picked up some more, blowing our plastic dishes and drying laundry around the playground behind the church while I ate macaroni and hot dog and broccoli and cheese, which was oddly satisfying. Earlier we had learned that the Johns Hopkins 4k for Cancer was in town at the same day we were, and I kept thinking that for every one of us, there has to be at least one or two of the same person on their team, and what their Keith or Anish, or better yet who their Mark would be, because they would want to discuss philosophy and then wrestle each other, and I would not want to miss out. At first, we were going to send over a small delegation of Illini 4000 riders to meet them, consisting of just our team leaders and Sehee, but instead everyone who was present in the church left, giving us a good representitive sample of who we were and more manpower if we would have to fight them. It was like looking into a mirror, the baskets of food stuffed with bags of cereal and bananas, the multitude of bags and sleeping gear spread out across a gym floor, the up-turned bikes resting on one side of the room, and the team car so packed that apparently the axles started bending (fortunately NOT the case with our van). They all have the same model LeMond which were bought wholesale from the manufacturer and which made their heads turn at the sight of Nick and my LeMonds, which despite being older and more steel-er, probably have better components. They also need two vans to haul around 27 peoples' worth of gear. Most notable was Arun's twin-sized inflatable mattress, something that would not fly on our team. I got the impression that we ran a tighter, more disciplined ship with our hour-long get-out-the-door sessions compared to what one of their members said lasted two hours and then some just so everyone can get packed, but they can do that because of their six-plus years of experience, longer-term relationships with hosts, and 4:30 wake-ups. In comparision, the Illini 4000 is the Spartan team to the Hopkins 4k's rich Athenian corps, but in the end, we both conquer a power that is greater than all of us. Alex, Sehee and I spoke to Alice, who had suffered some injury the first week of the Appalachians and had her knee wrapped. None of the riders were compelled to train beforehand and had to raise 3500 dollars which included the team bicycle. And so we all had a good time comparing scrapes and adventures when Michelle broke out some sprinklers to celebrate the the fourth of July a day late - their team collaborates with hosts to do mail drops and recieve packages with friends and family - which in her case included fireworks. I could go on with comparisions, but the only people close to a dopplegaenger were Sehee and their Korean rider who also came from Seoul. It was dark and after a viewing of their presentation and getting a complimentary H4k T-shirt - which was really, really nice, we left in the dark, only illuminated by the head and tail lights of Zach and Alicia's film car. Anish apologized profusely for making us ride in the dark and vowed that we would not do anything as dangerous again. We will not be riding in the desert at night and will have to make do with the early and late hours of sunshine. We will have to get used to getting up early and with all the excitement of the evening and meeting our peers, we begin tommorrow.

Friday we got up early to congregate with the Hopkins team at their church and eat our breakfast there before embarking on a joint ride towards our respective destintations. They took longer to pack and longer to eat, not surprising with a larger team, but had methods to keep together in the morning, like counting off in succession or their team ritual. In the morning they circle up and make the day's announcements before holding hands and making a team dedication. Today, they invited us to join us in their circle and together, the Illini and Hopkins teams made their dedications to family and friends, to the victims and survivors of cancer, to gracious hosts and folks met on the road alike. And then a long moment of silence to reflect, only punctuated with a long clap that increases in tempo before someone shouts "Where are we from???" to which the chorus is "Baltimore!" (or New York!) and "Where are we going???" to which one shouts "San... Francisco (Diego)!" This is repeated in succession until someone says "How do we get there???" and the response, something spirited to lighten to the mood, like "on the back of an elephant!" After that, we grouped together with members of their team and left with the intention that we would ride in groups of 3 to 4 with their groups of 4 to 6. I lost my group and went tandem with one of their riders who was interested in film and poetics and was also reading On the Road like I am. I'm surprised I didn't ask what his name was, but we ended up huffing and puffing up a hill to our first joint water stop a while before reaching the summit. They had a lot of food, more than the basket full that sat on the gym floor, like three baskets full, and enough for everyone to munch on at every water stop. After seeing this, our team made a lot of successful efforts in getting food donated like they do. I left with the gunners, those who don't like to take their time getting places, and it was like cycling with four or five Marks, folks who set a ferocious pace up and down and across and all points in between. I kept up for only so long and climbed up the day's pass, the Dallas Divide, and a paltry 8900 feet, alone and in lower gear. It was the steepest of the ascents we had done yet in Colorado, but it was rewarding to bomb down the other side into a V of a valley of tall pines where both team cars were waiting for us with lunch. It seemed like this was the time of day for tourists and middle aged day-riders alike to come by on their loaded down rigs and their multi-thousand-dollar titanium bikes alike. One couple apparently gave Allison two hundred-dollar bills as a donation for food alone, so this was the perfect place to stop. It was a sight, two teams swarming around their respective caches of food and mingling alike in the cool mountain air. And then the waiting game began as the anticipation of the caboose groups to arrive and eat spawned games of Throw-The-Rock-At-The-Rock. We departed happily down a lazy 30-mile-per-hour slope before they went forward to be concealed behind a rock face and we turned left, up the rapids of the San Miguel river. It was refreshing to ride with other people and above all, see how our compatriots live and work together. It inspired the six of us going up the mountains again to sing "Down by the Bay" and think of words that rhyme with Anish, Dan, Sean, Sehee, Keith, and Jon, which got tiring as the slope winded up through some brialliant red sandstone cliffs and narrowing, harrowing roads. Apparently the state D.O.T. decided to focus their construction efforts on the day we would be going into Telluride, so we waited in a queue, next to large pickups and even larger semis to be waved through one lane, squeezing between a rock and a hard piece of mechanical equipment. I made it out first, playing a game of Get Out Of The Way Of The Truck Baring Down On You Going Uphill And Weave Through Traffic Barriers, something my days of break-neck, white-knuckle fixed gear riding prepared me well for. I stopped at a scenic overlook into the Uncompaghre Forest and collected my teammates to wait for the lane of traffic in our direction to stop so we would have the road to ourselves. It would help, as the traffic was thick, and it helped that there was a null-traffic bike path going into town to avoid the logjam that is highway 143 into Telluride. And what a town it was with its European alpine charm and traffic circles and boutiques and family-friendly ice cream parlors and high-class dining and Victorian architecture and its liberal leanings, all surrounded by towering heights of green on all sides with a waterfall to the east and punctuated by clear-cut ski runs bare in the summertime, except for the skeletons of ski chairs that seem to go for an unusally long distance. The church we stayed at had to have been furnished by Williams and Sonoma or Crate and Barrel, it was cozy and extremely liveable. A couple from Texas who were guests of the pastor made us a spaghetti dinner and to say the least, they put avocado and organic dressing on the salad. I had died and gone to Telluride. Andrew and I wanted ice cream so we wandered the busy pedestrian main street for a hot and noisy ice cream parlor that managed to melt Sandy's ice cream before she paid for it and sent us packing to a grocery for something more timely and cost-effective. I resisted the urge to assuage my long-unsatisfied taste for organic soy milk but ended up buying a pint of Ben and Jerry's which, at a higher calorie density, I hoped would get me up tommorrow's climb. We then went to the gondola station to ride up the mountain. As a form of free public transportation, it had to be the most spectacular and the most terrifying, especially when the car slows to a stop, suspended one hundred or so feet above the ground, swinging back and forth before lurching forward again. At the mountain village I saw a map of the ski slopes and knew they made the slopes I've gone down in Michigan and Wisconsin seem paltry. Andrew said he had never skied before and I told him he wasn't missing much, just like we weren't missing much in the now-summertime ski resort that provides a lot of fresh, cool air, or Objectivists' conferences to celebrate the 50th anniversy of the Fountainhead. We spent little time in the village. At the summit I looked down at the village and it was an amazing sight to see that little resort town nestled in the receding light of the early night. We wandered into the visitor's center of a exclusive resort/restaurant/community and for some reason there was an empty executive desk in the lobby which Andrew sat down at and started asking me "so why do you want to be a part of this club?" I gave the classic Groucho Marx response, that I wouldn't want to be a part of any club that wants me as a member. And then we shook hands and agreed that twenty thousand a year was a reasonable offer. I really wouldn't want to have that high of an altitude lifestyle and am perfectly content with the open road and an expensive collection of road bicycles - for now. After the ride down we went to a Western wear store and tried on hats. I had joked ever since entering cow country that I wanted a Stetson. After seeing the price tag, I realized I should wait a while, or figured I would ruin it by packing it or wearing it while riding. Plus I really just wanted to try one on for size. After getting glared at by the saleswoman, we left into the cool mountain night, satisfied with our adventure through this all-season tourist haven.