End of the Road....for now...

The last portion of the ride that i am officially scheduled for took us from Telluride, CO to Pueblo, followed by a quick van ride up to Denver. Leaving Telluride we saw some really cold temps, probably in the upper 20's or lower 30's. Linc left us today, and headed back to Georgia (warm!). Too bad, it was a lot of fun riding with him!


We picked up a couple of new riders too though. Daniel, from T-ride was a buddy of Scott Elkins (our main contact man in telluride, and a pretty strong rider as well). we also we blessed with the presence of all former logistic directors, Chris Connelly and Andrew Suchocki. It was great to see those guys again, and they managed to pack alot of fun into their 2 day stay! So anyway the day out of Tride starts out downhill for 15 miles, and boy they were cold. Afterwards we climbed gradually for 12 miles so that warmed us all up. Daniel gave us a little verbal tour of the MTB'ing in the area, as well as some of the other good road rides.

Daniel and Jen with a sweet background shot.


The downhill was a blast, and Dave, chris, daniel and i flew down all the way to lunch. the remainder of the day was relatively flat ride into Montrose, where we stayed at a methodist church.

Heres Nate and Anuj suggesting a new rest stop sponsor. Suchocki would be so proud.

And Steph and Katie riding a goat.....



The next day's ride took us from Montrose to Gunnison. We had two decent climbs back to back in the beginning, followed by an easy ride past Blue Mesa Lake and into Gunnison. Chris and I had a little race to the top of the first climb, and chris got the better of me by about 10 seconds.... we were both about to pass out at the top, and ashley thought we were totally crazy.
Here's the first group up to the top.

Here's Nate getting an obviously fantastic backrub....these should be standard at all rest stops.


The next day was Continental Divide day, as we rode from Gunnison to Salida. the day starts out easily and relatively flat for about 35 miles. Then we climb for 9 straight, at a consistent grade with no breaks. Then its downhill all the way into Salida.
Heres a google earth view of the Divide


i was hoping to beat Chris and I's time up the hill from last year, which was around 51 minutes from the bottom (avg 10mph). I took the climb pretty hard from the get-go, but it was a little tough without chris there to pace off of and chase after. i was able to keep the pace pretty high for first half, which let me reduce the effort just a tad up by the top (more likely i was just tired!) anyway i made it up to the top in 47:40 or about 10.9 mph. so i was pretty happy with that, chris is going to have to come back next year during his research block and give a shot in 2009. Nate was right behind me in about 50 minutes, followed closely by cory, anuj, jen, joe and kel. Everybody did a great job, and the rest of the hills will be easy now! The way down is super fast, we probably were well over 40mph for 20+minutes. Before we hit Salida HS for the night we stopped at sonic because it was happy hour, and Carissa had never been before. She loved it...Bobby didn't...
Here are the girls at sonic


To cap off a great day a small group of us had some fantastic pizza dinner at Amica's in Salida.

My last day riding with the group was from Salida to Pueblo. This was a ride we didn't get to do in 2007 because of a freak snow storm (actually snow in CO in april/may isn't freak at all, as i learned today) This ride was beautiful! we started out going along the Arkansas river and through a small canyon before our our last bit of climbing in the rockies. it wasn't too difficult, but the scenery was spectacular!
Here's Anuj with the end of the Sangre de Christo mountains as a backdrop.


The day ended for me with a sweet downhill (definitely a little sketchy at times, and Anuj's battle wounds tell the tale here)
After packing everyone into the vans we headed up to Denver for our event at the med school, and maybe i'll write a bit more about that tomorrow....