First off, let me just summarize and say that the road trip with Megan went great. Lots of fun happened, but I won’t cover that here.
The bike trip started by Megan driving me to the top of trail ridge road in Rocky Mountain National Park, from which I joyously coasted back down to Estes Park. Is that cheating? Most definitely! But I say it’s justified since the last time I rode down that road, it was during a whiteout blizzard in August, and I was too focused on not being blown off the side of the mountain to really enjoy the 4000 foot descent.
I met Megan in town, and then made my way south out of town (unloaded, like a wuss). I met Megan again at a campground, but it was too early to start dinner, so we drove until we found a bar – the mill site inn in Ward. Thus began the first adventure of the trip!
We’re sipping drinks in this mountain town bar, when Rebirth’s Do What You Wanna comes on the jukebox. This is the last place I expected to hear New Orleans second line music. Megan goes to investigate and meets Charlie, a jazz guitarist from New Orleans who loaded up the jukebox. We tell him about the BLO, and he invites us to play music with him at a potluck down the road. (we brought our horns on the road trip). So we end up having out all night with these folks around a fire barrel, having drinks and trying to follow along with Charlie’s guitar keys. I think most folks had had enough drinks that they didn’t mind how sloppy we were. It was pretty amazing.
The next morning Megan left to return the rental car, and my ride began in earnest. Along the way, I stopped by Mike and Sherry’s (our potluck hosts from the night before) to say hi. Further down the road, i ended up back in the mill site inn for lunch, when in walked Mike, soon followed by Sherry and most of the folks who had been at the potluck, otherwise known as the “3:30 crowd”.
Even though I was taking lots of breaks and trying to take it slow and easy, it was a pretty tough day. There were a couple of pretty tough climbs, and I’m really just not in very good shape right now. My average speed for the day was only 8.9! Hopefully, I’ll get up to speed soon, because I’ve got the 4000 foot climb over Loveland pass coming up!
Okay, that was an epic post. Over and out!
