Real Geeks Ride

Day 43-49: A Bandolier of Updates

Posted on 09. Jul, 2009 by carlos in Touring

We are alive and kicking/pedaling! This post is currently being written in the house of Kirk Hanna, a sports writer for the local paper here in Rawlins, WY.

Firstly, a huge thanks to Tara Anderson from Lijit.com who helped put together a meetup in Boulder. Thanks to everyone who was able to make it out!

This morning, Joe woke up with a bit of altitude sickness (hypoxia) which knocked him out for 17.5 hours. We have been over 6000+ feet high for the past few days and it finally caught up to him. He woke up to vomit, then fall back asleep. After a few more hours in his mini-coma, started feeling better.

• We celebrated the 4th in Boulder, CO.
• We almost ran over a rattle snake.
• We legally biked 100+ miles on I-80. We felt safer than MANY other roads.
• Mosquitoes are ridiculous! A motivation to not stop.

The live tracking is temporarily broken and says we are still chillin’ in Julesburg, CO. I have temporarily put up another map on the Track Us page. Greg Hendrickson from MapMyRace.com is helping us get the kinks worked out. He is quite amazing to work with.

After the old-historic-east, the corn-nothingness-middle, we have reached the outdoorsy mountains of our west. The creeks are clear enough to swim in, and there is a huge increase of people wearing The North Face outerwear.

Joe hopped a barbed wire fence to take this picture:

It’s impossible to feel geeky at certain moments. The farther west we go, the more these moments happen. I was biking at night into Laramie, WY at night on a wide shoulder with few cars, stars in full bloom, and only the sounds of prairie dogs and crickets to entertain my ears. The moon had been casting shadows and gave enough light to see debris on the shoulder. I drifted off into a trance for about 20 miles and had no thoughts of technology, email, or anything that required electricity. I was in the true sense of “getting back to nature.”

The Tour De France podcast has been keeping me up to date on the standings. I just finished watching Breaking Away and I’m tempted to enter some races when I get back to Austin. Any suggestions on how to judge which races one should enter?

Cycling from Denver to Fort Collins was too easy. Iowa and other states were a challenge while Colorado had to be better and put bike lanes everywhere. Hundreds of miles of trails gave the peace of mind that we can enjoy a nice bike ride. Cyclists sprinkled all over the roads, and drivers who are probably also cyclists. Way to show-off, Colorado! How dare you give us awesome people like these riders:

Upon Entering Wyoming:

The next few days will be ‘getting to nature’ times for both of us. Electronics will run out of battery, Joe will be taking beautiful pictures, and I’ll be in deep trances of thought.

Many thanks to Ian, our host in Boulder who let us borrow the last half of the Trans-Am route maps made by the Adventure Cycling Association. The second half of our cross country journey will be on a designated, widely traveled path. It is not geeky to use paper maps, but we do appreciate quality work. These maps are pure analog quality.

Tags: boulder, denver, fort collins, julesburg, lijit, rawlins, tour de france, wyoming