Colorado Springs.

I left Saturday to head down to Colorado Springs for the memorial mtb ride for EJ and Jayson. The drive down was ok. I did hit a fair amount of traffic for a Saturday afternoon. I always wonder where that many people are going. Of course, I am out there going somewhere myself.
It took me about an hour and forty five minutes to arrive. Not bad at all. I got to meet Scott's girlfriend Kayla. She's pretty nice. He's pretty nice. They are great people to hang out with. Wish we lived closer.
We went and got dinner and then stopped my Scott's parents house. His mom was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma a bit after I was. I am glad to see she is doing well and feeling good. I know she had a bit of a rough time with it here and there so it was nice to see her healthy. We headed back and got our stuff ready for the ride and got to bed.
I did not sleep too well. I had the windows open at first to let a breeze in, but the cars going by kept waking me up. Then I closed the windows but I was too hot. Then around five I started hearing pop rock music from the 90's from the coffee shop down stairs. I was already awake when my alarm went off at 6.
I got up, ate, and got ready to go. We left Scott's around 7:30 to head to a park where we were meeting up. In all we had 16 people in the group. We started up and I felt ok. The pavement road turns into a dirt road and that is where I started loosing ground. I haven't really ridden in a month or more and expected that I would be sucking on this ride. At least I didn't disappoint myself!
Not that the ride up was hard, but I am not in shape and I was also worried about keeping enough go in my legs to finish the ride. I really didn't have any idea of how far we were going or what the terrain would be like and I didn't want to blow my load in the beginning so to speak.
Alot of the climb up was dirt roads or jeep roads that were in ok shape. We topped out around 11k feet which is the highest I have been and still had my feet on solid ground. I don't think the altitude affected me so much. I didn't feel it anyway aside from generally feeling like I was dragging ass.
I had to stop on the way up to poo. The last time I had to go outside was in the winter at castlewood and I had to wipe with snow and pine cones. This time I found a nice aspen grove. Their fat round leaves were much better.
We began the descent and I felt more at home here. The rocky technical stuff was alot like the trails I ride here and I felt more at home and passed a few people on my way down. It felt good to not be in dfl for a change. But anytime the trail turned up I steadily moved backwards. I had to stop and poo again and found some more aspen trees. I also saw a deer in the woods about ten feet away from me.
One thing that really threw me off on the descent was the soil if you can call it that. It's called scree and it is loose gravel. Really tricky to ride in for someone who is used to dirt. I almost crashed several times but managed to save it. It's like when you turn instead of turning your front wheel cuts in and you almost high side and then slide before regaining traction.
I made it to the bottom intact and was happy to have completed the ride. I felt bad for making everyone wait up for me so much but they were all nice about it.
We headed back into town past the side of the road memorial for EJ and Jayson. It would have been nice to have them along with us, but it was a fitting memorial ride for them. I am not religious but if there is a heaven I bet they were looking down and smiling to see a good bunch of people ride in their honor.
I left the springs around 430 and got back to Longmont around 6. I was going to stop and get Katie on the way, but she said she wouldn't be done until seven. I took Gunner down to her work with me. She loved seeing him there.
I had a really great time on the ride. It was definitely alot different from the trails we have here which I would say are more technical overall and alot shorter and steeper. Walker Ranch does 1700 feet of elevation gain/loss in 7.4 miles and Hall Ranch does about the same in 10 miles. I think the quickest I have done the first two miles of Hall was about 30 minutes. Definitely a different type of riding than we did yesterday.
This should be a good week. Tomorrow we are going to climb and I think when Katie leaves for work I will go for a ride on my motorcycle. Possibly destinations include Winter Park or Vedauwoo in Wyoming. Wednesday Toots and the Maytals are playing in Boulder and we are going to see them. They are one of my favorite reggae bands ever and put on a good live show so I hear.