New Mexicarizutah

Mesa Verde bike caravan

We rode through a forest of fire-blackened trees to reach the ruins

We set foot on New Mexico soil at the four corners

And then we left

And went to Arizona. As you can see, Ryan has just done something totally hilarious.

Rosalita got her handle bars did

We've had very little luck with cell phone service or public computer access on The Navajo Reservation. The owner of the movie theater where we slept last night. Gordon, has been kind enough to let us use his computer for a quick update. Our recent daily mileage:2 miles from Durango to the outskirts of Durango, where we were cut off suddenly by another thunder storm and forced to take shelter under the awning of a shack behind a gas station; 35 miles to Mesa Verde National Park, where we met three awesome girls (also touring cyclists) who helped us get in on their parks pass and shared their campsite with us; 30 miles to The Ute Mountain Tribal Park Visitors' Center (plus 35 miles within Mesa Verde), another thunder storm cut us short; 97 miles to Kayenta, AZ, where we slept in the theater. Thanks, Gordon!

This old fella finally kicked the bucket. Made it all the way from New Haven to Kayenta

Replaced this once-flat Continental. Must have been a pinch flat because the tire still looks strong. Call him Lazarus.

Welcome to the desert, son

Red Mountain Pass

Do not anticipate the summit. It does not need your expectation to arrive. The promise of an end will only make you more anxious, more desperate, the longer it is delayed. No, it is better to expect to climb forever. Then, you cannot be disappointed, no matter how long the summit takes in arriving.

Ouray

Long way down

Ryan explores a mountain cave

Into the shadows of the valley at night

In the distance the mountains grow, forming a smoky silhouette only dimly discernible in the waning twilight. As they approach, their enormity describes a stark, jagged edge, an impossible blackness carved out against the starry night. And those ghostly cliffs close in all around, standing tall like giants, quietly menacing, as rank upon rank of looming pines peer down darkly from the barricades.

A buck stands on the shoulder thirty paces ahead, in an island of light cast by the glow of a lonesome street lamp. The too sudden realization of his gaze startles you. He seems to you an apparition, staring, motionless. There is a strange power in his stillness, a self-assurance which makes you think that he must be more than the animal you see, all the vital energies of the wilderness manifested in the form of an antlered beast. And then, slowly but with confidence, he approaches.


We spent the other night in a gazebo in the park at Ouray (58 miles from The Black Canyon). I was a very comfortable until the sprinklers gave me a soggy surprise in the middle of the night. Ryan happened to be lying on the dry half of the gazebo. In the morning we bathed in the nearby hot springs. Ryan was disappointed that they didn't look more rustic and less like a pool club.

Yesterday we crossed the San Juan Mountains at Red Mountain Pass (11,018 feet), Molas Pass (10,910 feet) and Coal Bank Pass (10,640 feet). In total we rode around 74 miles and ended up in Durango, where we spent the night at Jared's house, who is a friend of a friend.

Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park

Both of our first visits to a national park. The Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park is located about 15 miles east of Montrose, CO, off of route 50. People in the area spoke highly of it and recommended us to check it out, but they mentioned nothing about the climb up to the park, after pedaling through 65 miles of mountainous terrain, at sunset. The elevation of Montrose, CO is 5,806 feet and the highest point at the national park is 8,289 feet. It was just surprising to me that all the people we asked about the park never mentioned the 2,000 foot climb in 6 miles to enter the park, at the end of our day, in the dark. Good. For the better, probably, but totally worth it.

Let's make the most of our youth and ride our bicycles across America

Riding your bike from coast to coast is the coolest job in America. Also, it's not a job. Yet.

I am just a scrawny boy from the wetlands of southern Connecticut. Wherever I can ride my bike, so can any body with two good legs.

What is good about traveling on a bicycle?
1. You can feel good about moving on the strength of your own body, and that strength only grows
2. You can move slowly enough to see where you are
3. As Hemingway has written, and as Gilhuly has quoted in a recent photograph, "you learn the contours of a country best"
4. You are exposed to the world, which means that you are vulnerable to more dangers. But your reward for this risk is an unmediated encounter with the places you move through. The sun and the wind and the rain all have meaning to you, because they touch you, and they affect you directly. The real temperature of the air, the strength and direction of the breeze, sounds and smells, all are available to you. Your relationship with the passage is imminent, intimate, direct, for better or worse.


Zach and Robin made us a delicious pancake breakfast (it was vegan). It gave us fuel to climb over Monarch Pass (11,312 feet high). We crossed the continental divide, there. Now, all the water that we see will be running towards the Pacific.

Blue Mesa Reservoir

Dillon Pinnacles

Wings!

That day we rode 65 miles to Gunnison. They say that winters in Gunnison are some of the coldest in the nation. Fifty degrees below zero is not uncommon. In Gunnison I met a woman on a bike with two small dogs trained to respond to commands in Italian. We received more than one invitation to hospitality, the most appealing of which was the couch and spare bed of Steve and Nicole, for which we were very grateful. Steve, if your name is actually Scott, please forgive me. You deserve to be named correctly, but my namemory is very bad. It's something I need to work on.

Yesterday we rode another 65 miles to Black Canyon of The Gunnison National Park, where we slept.

Black Canyon of The Gunnison

Our entrance to the Rocky Mountians

Hello Rocky Mountains

Our introduction to the Rockies was climbing up to Windy point, our first summit. Windy point was also our first camping spot in the Rockies, the spot was tucked away behind this freight-converted home in the woods and in a very convenient distance to a local food mart, owned by the Kims from CA. The Kims, who also owned the freight-converted house, offered us to stay in it (above) but we decided that it would be nicer to sleep exposed, under the stars.

Our first respectable pass

After descending Kenosha pass at over 40 mph, we stopped in the small, high-plains town of Jefferson, CO. Both Dwight and I went in separate directions to fill up on water, Dwight had the better direction. He bumped into Garret, a real-estate agent and cool dude who owns a ranch, a realty office and a restaurant in town. He and his wife, Tess invited us to stay at their house. Tess cooked us dinner and we all watched a movie together at their house to end the night. We woke up a bit late and Garret remarked, "boy! you guys sure crashed hard." We got ready and met Garret at the restaurant where he had prepared us a hearty breakfast for the road ahead. Their openness, kindness and generosity still caught me by surprise, even after all our encounters so far.

The Moose-Caboose (Garret and Tess's restaurant)

Steady, mate, steady

Crawl up one side, bomb down the other. That's the name of the mountain game.

Since we took to the mountains we have met with nothing but kindness and hospitality. We're getting less 'Why?' and more 'Wow! That's awesome!' The first day out of Denver (more like a half- or a quarter-day since we spent most of it running errands in the city) we rode 28 miles (and climbed about 3,000 feet) to Windy Point, just short of Conifer. The couple at Boulder Gas gave us free coffee and tea and let us camp in the adjacent lot. The next day we rode 40 miles and crossed the Tarryall Mountains at Kenosha Pass (10,001 feet), ending at Jefferson, where Tess and Garrett, who run a realty agency and a snack bar (in a town of 16 people), fed us and gave us a bed to sleep on. Our third day out of Denver finds us over one more big pass and 74 miles down the road in Salida, at the home of fellow cyclists Zack and Robin.

We've met with a lot of friendly faces between stops, too, from a free meal and computer use (when it was hard to come by) at the Knotty Pine in Bailey to words of encouragement and lunch money from a couple of sweet hearts in the Conifer post office. A lot of motorists are giving us affirmative little horn messages, so gentle that it's not quite "toot toot", but more like "t't...t't t't." And there are bugs that hang out among the red rocks that sounds like little machine guns.


Look what altitude has done to packaged food!