Meeker, CO - Back to the desert!

Hey everyone! I updated the last post to make it less graphic because I did not notice how much detail I was getting into about the accident. Sorry about any discomfort my blog may have caused, but I am here this week to make up with tales of joyous biking occasions! Right now I'm sitting next to Natalie - she is really cool and really old. I am so glad we are friends (she just said that to me.. because she knows I'm blogging. I had to put it in here)

Today we rode from Rifle, CO to Meeker, CO. It was a 41 mile ride back in the desert terrain. We rode out in a large group with Karen, Katie R, Katie K, Craig, and Nichole. Nothing too exciting happened for the first 10 miles so we decided to make our day more interesting. At around mile 10 we decided that the small hill (also known as a mountain) on the right on the road would be perfect for climbing. We got off of our bikes and began the ascent up the side of the mountain.
After climbing up a couple hundred feet we realized that the mountain was much steeper than we originally intended and that there weren't any good footholds in the mountain to make climbing easy. Most of the group took notice of this and gave up on the climb but me and Katie K. would not be deterred. We climbed ferociously upwards and sent some mini rock slides down the mountain. Upon reaching the top we realized that the terrain at the top was much different than on the sides and also that there wasn't anything interesting up there at all. We took a couple of pictures and then figured out a plan for the descent down the mountain. (View from the top of the mountain!)
I watched Katie K. as she used the mountain as a slide and scooted down the mountain to steadier footing. I followed suit and eventually we were all at the base of the mountain ready to finish our ride. Lunch showed up early in the ride at mile 18 because it was the location of the only gas station to be found on today's route. It turned out that the gas station was closed, but we had good company with Angela and Megan in the van. Katie R., Karen, Nichole, and I rode out from lunch together. Mile 28 was the beginning of a 5 mile stretch of gravel and construction. We made it through that only to find out 3 miles later that the gravel had politely left Nichole with a souvenir of a flat tire. I helped her change it and then we race quickly (mostly downhill) into Meeker. As soon as we arrived, we unloaded the trailer and coolers. I then proceeded to get a milkshake before heading to the rec center to swim. We were there probably two hours going down the slide and playing in the pool. After that we headed back to the church for some excellent spaghetti, salad, and dessert. We finished up the evening by putting more paint on the trailer and playing guitar.

Yesterday we had a build day in Rifle, CO. The build was interesting because it is the first Habitat we have worked with that has a professional contractor in charge of the build site. He broke us up into small groups and had us each do jobs around the house. The group I got placed in with Natalie, Beth (a B&B alum), Melissa, and MOB were all working on sorting building materials, shoveling rocks, breaking up concrete, and moving boulder piles into a dumpster. It was interesting being on a build and not really directly working on the house. Oh well, I'm sure what we did helped in some way or another. After the build we all went back to the fire station where we were staying. The firemen pulled out an old fire truck and let us all play with the fire hose and shoot water at each other. After that they all let us dress up in their gear and take a bunch of pictures. They also filled up a above ground pool thing so we could swim if we wanted. While I was riding into Rifle the day before, I saw a sign that said Rifle Falls were 12 miles away. I organized a group of 10 people to ride with us to the falls and make an epic side trip.
The ride out to the falls was intense because it seemed like I was so tired that I could not make my bike go more than 10 mph. I realized later that we were going slightly uphill the entire time. When we got there we took a bunch of pictures and explored some mysterious caves. Picture of Rifle Falls.

Picture: a view from inside one of the caves!
We noticed it was nearing sunset so we got back on our bikes to ride back to Rifle. On the ride back we didn't have to pedal at all because there was a slight downhill the whole time. A view of the sunset over Rifle Lake.
We stopped once to take pictures, but aside from that I rolled 30 mph the entire time. It was awesome to get rewarded with a descent. For dinner Me, Natalie, David, Beth, and Michael went to a Mexican restaurant and had good burritos, enchiladas, and an ice cream dessert. It was excellent. I finished my evening by sleeping outside under the stars and enjoying the cool breeze.

The day before that we rode 71 miles from Aspen, CO to Rifle, CO. The day started out awesome because we got breakfast donated to us from the pastor of the church at a bakery in Aspen. After devouring 3 pancakes, I rode out of Aspen with Natalie and Beth. This ride was epic because we rode on a bike path for the first 40 miles of the ride. It was great to get to ride and not worry about cars or other dangerous things we encounter daily. The bike path was perfect because it was an entirely downhill ride on the bike path. We rode about 10 miles before catching up with Eugene, Megan, Karen, and Lance. The riding group
At around mile 20 Natalie disappeared and apparently got a few flats. When we all arrived at lunch, the usual PB&J sandwich did not appeal to me, Preston, Kim, or David. We all decided that Subway sounded a lot better so we took a side trip to Subway in Glenwood Springs, CO. When we arrived at Subway we noticed a Qdoba across the street. We went to Qdoba, told the manager what we were doing, and she told us our meal would be free. We all ate our free burritos and headed down to Twin Rivers Park to swim in the rivers. While we were swimming, Lizzy, Katie K, Varun, and Melissa caught up to us. We all left the river in a large group and got on the Interstate for 5 miles. Normally interstates are extremely scary, but this one had one lane conveniently closed down so we were protected from the traffic. It's almost like Colorado DOT closed it down just for us. Thank you CDOT! After we got off the interstate, the headwinds picked up intensely. Lizzy and I pulled away from the group in a paceline. I pulled her for 2 miles at around 18 mph until she flew around me on a downhill going 24 mph. A view of Lizzy pulling the paceline: I followed her for 2 miles until switching with her again. We continued our paceline of 22 mph for the rest of the ride switching every 2 miles. It was awesome to get to ride with Lizzy. We both pushed ourselves and made excellent time finishing out the ride. We took showers at the fire station and hung out with the firemen until dinner. After dinner we watched Dumb & Dumber to commemorate our time in Aspen. I was tired from the riding of the day so I decided to go to sleep at 9:30 outside on the sidewalk. Little did I know that I would sleep 11 hours and wake up at 8:30 the next day. It was a good day.

Okay.. now that I am caught up on my blogging from the last blog entry.. I am going to do a hidden in blog shout out!
Mrs. Whittemore and Lizzy's grandma - Thank you so much for always sending excellent cookies/brownies/everything. I'm pretty sure I look forward to your weekly packages more than Lizzy does.
Dad - People are not mad that you weren't at the top of Independence Pass, they are just highly disappointed that there was no Mr. $ stop.
All CUS09ers - You guys are the best at sending me post cards! I really enjoy all of them and hopefully I'll get around to sending some back.
Everyone else - Thanks for continuing to read my blog and for donating. Our trip has raised almost $150,000 and we couldn't have done it without all of you.

And lastly, hopefully my blog entry this time is a little less traumatic. I will try to keep my blog more on the PG-13 level. haha. Anyways, thanks as always for reading and I'm going to go to sleep now because I have to drive the van 112 miles tomorrow. (It's tough work!)
Until next time..

Aspen, CO - A week's worth of building and the Rockies!

Hello again everyone! It has been a long time since I last posted and a lot has happened in the last few weeks. We had a rider get in a pretty bad accident about a week and a half ago and that is part of why I haven't updated recently. I guess I'll go ahead and tell you what happened.

When we were riding 116 miles from Walsenburg, CO to Trinidad, CO (about 2 weeks ago) the first 40 miles of the ride were miserable. They were seriously the most frustrating 40 miles I have ever had. The headwind was miserable and it was a slight climb until the first lunch stop. Katie R, Craig, Karen, Angela, and myself all slowly powered through until the lunch stop. After the first lunch the wind switched directions and we had a significant increase in speed and flew at around 23 mph average into a Silver Cliff, CO. We stopped at a Shell and I got a Subway sandwich to take to the second lunch stop about 20 miles away. Lizzy joined us while at the Subway and climbed with us for about 10 miles. When we were nearing the top of the climb, Angela, Lizzy, and I broke away from Katie R. and Karen on the ascent. Lizzy and I stopped to wait and Angela powered on towards the top of the mountain. We all reached the top together and then I powered forward to get some speed on the descent. I powered down the mountain at around 45 mph and it was the most gorgeous rock canyons all around the road. After a couple of miles I came to a hairpin turn that had a caution sign that said to slow to 20 mph. On that turn, one of our riders Angela lost control and hit a guardrail. She had a deep cut on her leg, but she is luckily okay and still with our group. Angela got airlifted to the hospital in Pueblo and went into emergency surgery. She had a large cut on her leg that they cleaned and repaired the damaged muscle tissue. The unfortunate news is that the recovery for the muscle damage is 6 weeks, so Angela will be our passenger in the van for the next 5 weeks. I was pretty shaken up about the whole incident for awhile and that's why I didn't update my blog. That night when I got into Pueblo, I stayed the night in the hospital with Angela and spent the next day trying to help her out in anyway possible. I'm so glad that she is okay and did not do any real permanent damage to her leg, but it is tragic that she can't ride with us. I'm glad that I was the first person there and was able to help out but it is definitely something you never want to happen to any of your riders. I'm so glad that she is okay!
(this is edited due to the fact that I was extremely tired when I wrote last time and didn't pay attention to how much detail! Sorry about that!)

Today we rode 40 miles from Twin Lakes, CO to Aspen, CO! It was an epic Bike & Build day of climbing Independence Pass and reaching an elevation of 12,095 ft. I rode with Karen, Melissa, and Kelsey for the first half of the ride. The ride was gorgeous and we climbed pretty steadily for the first 12 miles through the Rocky Mountains. While we were climbing, I made everyone stop about 500 times so I could take pictures of the Rocky Mountains. Every time I looked up and saw a different angle on the mountains, I felt like I needed to take a picture in order to capture the scenery in front of me. The pictures don't do it justice, but I will probably upload a ton just to give you an idea of what we were riding through. I also made sure to make Karen stop a lot because she has asthma and I wanted to make sure she got acclimated to the elevation change on the way up. At mile 12 we began climbing switchbacks up to the summit. We kept a solid pace while climbing closer to the summit of the pass. When we got to the top, we were greeted by a crowd of Bike & Builders that cheered as we reached the summit. It was a great feeling to accomplish my second 12,000+ climb and I am sure it will not be my last. It was cold at the top, but my adrenaline was high so I didn't notice. We took a ton of pictures at the sign and then went to a scenic overlook area to take pictures with the snow capped mountains as a backdrop. After some pictures we climbed off the trail to make some snowballs to throw at each other. I also laid in the snow to make a snow angel, which was a bad idea because I was not wearing my arm warmers/leg warmers/rain jacket. While we were playing in the snow, we saw Kim & Jillian climbing up the last switchback and we ran to greet them. We cheered them in when they arrived at the top and celebrated with them. It was amazing to see everyone in our group make the climb to the top of a 12,095 elevation pass. I am extremely proud of all of the riders! After lunch we began our 16 mile descent. I kept a steady pace of around 30 mph on the way down with a max speed of 43. Karen and I descended at about the same speed and we were within viewing distance of each other the whole descent. We heard about a cliff jumping spot when we were at the top and stopped at a campground to ask where the swimming hole was located. The mountain biking locals told us to follow them downhill and took us to a spot called the Devil's Punchbowl. It was a gorgeous spot that you could cliff jump 40 ft into freezing snow melt water. Karen and I flagged down a group of riders coming down the mountain to join us in the adventure. Dave, Craig, Karen, Brad, and myself were the only ones to jump. It was a rush to step out off of the ledge and the water was so cold when I hit that it knocked the air out of me. The water was so cold that it temporarily shocked the nerves on my skin and it took all of my energy to swim the 20 ft. to get out of the water. After the cliff jumping, I descended the rest of the way into Aspen with Brad. For dinner Dave and I ate at La Cantina and it was really good. After dinner I had to do laundry with laundry crew. Before we left for laundry we were talking with a man outside of the church and he gave us a $500 donation. It is always incredible to see how generous people can be when they hear about our cause. We really only talked with him for 5 minutes before he handed us a large donation. It was definitely a good B&B day.

It is really late here and we are getting up at 6:00 am tomorrow to ride to Rifle, CO. I will try to keep updating this post with more days that have happened since the last post. It will definitely take me a few days to catch up. Sorry about that.