Independence Day

This week Jess made a new blog rule in order to cull some of the dead wood from our list of links. The rule is pretty simple; no post for a year and you’re gone. Our blog isn’t quite that dated, but it is high time for an update (Editor’s note: I started this blog post over a week ago, and I’m just now trying to finish it. The pictures are also fairly unrelated!). Back over the July 4th weekend, we tried to go camping up in the mountains, but we didn’t plan far enough ahead and ended up having to hope for an available walk-up campsite. Our friend Elijah was planning to camp with us, and since Jess really didn’t want to drive for hours only to have to turn back, we limited our search to a few sites along the Peak-to-Peak highway. We left a bit early on Friday in order to improve our odds, but alas, it wasn’t to be.

On the way out of Nederland, Phoebe got sick. It was the first time I can remember her throwing up in a long time, and we couldn’t tell if it was the twisty highway, hot weather, bad food, or the onset of a bout of the flu. We stopped along the highway to clean her up and gave her a chance to get some fresh air before hopping back into the car and driving the rest of the way to Kelly Dahl. Sadly, there were no available campsites. On the way back to Ned, we decided to try out the sites along West Magnolia Road. We’d never camped there before, so we had no idea if they typically filled up or not. While they don’t take reservations, our observation was that the majority of the “campers” were actually living at the dispersed campsites. After what seemed like an hour of driving around the bad roads that make up the camping area (and reconnecting with Jess, who at one point

walked off in a different direction to check out a couple of sites) Phoebe again got sick to her stomach. I pulled her out of her car seat and got her cleaned up, and we walked around together for a bit. At that point, I made the decision that we shouldn’t go camping with a poor sick kiddo anyway, so it was all that much easier to head back into Ned for some dinner and a beer at the local brewpub.

Back in Ned we walked through a couple of stores before heading over to the restaurant. It was still pretty early, and some of us needed to work up an appetite. The little antiques and furniture shop had an exhibit of “Colorado Nudes” that we checked out. They were a series of oil paintings on canvas by a local artist, and the prices were quite reasonable. The art wasn’t too bad either. Eventually we went over to the restaurant and were fortunate enough to get a nice table on the patio that was fully shaded by the building. I didn’t want to have to put a bunch of sunscreen on Phoebe, so this worked out perfectly. While waiting for our food (pulled pork for Jess, beef brisket for me, and the soup du jour for Elijah) we chased after Phoebe as she ran all over the deck.

After dinner we headed back into Boulder and dropped off Elijah at his place on our way home. Elijah and I made plans to meet up Tuesday morning (I had an extra day off for the holiday) at Amante in North Boulder for some coffee while watching Le Tour. The plan was to ride up to Jamestown afterward for a little exercise. When the morning came around, we were both having some tire trouble, so I ended up getting a ride to the coffee shop from Jess (lame) and Elijah had to catch the bus. It was fun to watch a bit of the race (especially in bike-obsessed Boulder) and fun to have an extra day off from work in which to hang out. It was a bit of a hilly stage with a wee uphill finish that did see a few attacks by the climbers, but the biggest surprise was seeing big Thor Hushovd hang with the skinny lads up the hills of Bretagne to keep his maillot jaune. After the stage ended we fixed a couple of flats (front tire for me and rear for Elijah) and headed off to Jamestown.

We (Jess, Phoebe, Elijah, and I) had all  made a similar attempt a couple of days earlier that started with me pulling Phoebe in the Chariot. I was riding the mountain bike in part because I didn’t feel like fixing the flat tire on my road bike, but also because I thought I’d need the extra low gears to pull the Chariot all the way up the hill. We started out going way too fast. Jess was killing it down highway 36, and I was doing everything I could to keep up with her. Sadly, Phoebe wasn’t helping a bit! After we made the turn at Lefthand Canyon, I demanded we stop for a second so that I could throw up.

I ended up keeping my coffee and biscotti down, but Jess took over the Chariot-pulling duties to give me a break. Assuming she would be the slowest, Jess took off while I sat down in the grass for a couple of minutes to recover. I never really did recover, but after a couple of minutes, we started off again. Before we made it to Old Stage Road, Elijah came down with a flat tire. He got a loaner tube from a generous cyclist, but we couldn’t get my pump to seal around the valve stem and therefore couldn’t get any air into the tube. I made a final attempt at pumping up the tire by scavenging the fresh rubber insert from the Schrader side, but ended up shearing off the top of the Presta valve, rendering the tube utterly useless. With no way to fix Elijah’s tire, we aborted over Old Stage with Jess pulling Phoebe, me gutting out the climb on the mountain bike, and Elijah walking. Jess was amazing pulling the kiddo up the short but steep hill, and we were quickly back at Amante. I left the girls to get some lunch and drove back to pick up Elijah. It wasn’t the best way to abort a ride (broken tube), but it was a good length for the kiddo.

Based on the earlier ride, I wasn’t too confident about reaching Jamestown. I had the road bike, which is of course an improvement, but I’m clearly in awful shape. Despite my terrible condition, it turned out to be a decent ride. I was clearly holding Elijah back, so with a mile or two to go, he dropped a can of whoop on me and left me in the dust. We reached Jamestown where I enjoyed a lunch of Coke and French fries (Elijah had a Big Bopper ice cream sandwich after complaining that he couldn’t stomach any more sugar). We chatted a bit and headed back down the hill. I mostly coasted down the hill in order to give Elijah a break (he couldn’t get his bike to shift into the big chainring), and he again dusted me once we made it back to the flats of highway 36. Back in Boulder, we sat outside Amante for a few minutes before riding over to meet Jess at work. Just as we were leaving, it started to rain heavily, and of course, it stopped just as we reached the underground parking at Lynne Rienner.