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.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment