Friday, July 11, 2008

Durango – 7.11.08

No dirt ride today and I forgot my camera so no pix. Hit the road and rode west out to Cortez. Rode by Mesa Verde National Park on the way to Cortez. I love national parks so I thought that I’d do a loop in the park. Rode up to the gate and this cute little park ranger said ‘That’ll be 8 bones please’… Seriously?? I only had $10 on me and I needed that for food and bevy’s later on in the ride, so I took a pass. After looking at a map of the park, it looks like it’d be a pretty sweet ride. I could probably ring about 40 miles of riding in the park alone over some tight, twisty, undulating terrain. I’m going to try and do it sometime next week, even if it costs 8 bones, it looks like it might be worth it if not for the scenery, but also to log some good miles on roads where cars can only go 25 mph and the diesel fumes won’t be quite as thick. My body doesn’t run very well on diesel.
So I continued on to Cortez and then headed north on 184 to Dolores. Once I got to Dolores I turned around and retraced my tread back to Durango. Logged in about 106 miles for the day, a little over 6,300 feet of climbing for a total ride time of 5 hours on the nose. The roads were great for the most part with shoulders wide enough that I wasn’t bothered by all of the truckers salivating at the idea of mowing over my scrawny buttocks. The ride wasn’t as nearly as strenuous as the ride up to Silverton. There was still a lot of climbing, just not quite as steep. Plus the elevation on some of the climbs up to Silverton are over 11,000 feet, whereas today I peaked out at around 8,300 feet for some slightly thicker air.
If anybody knows of a good paying job here in Durango in which I can use my skizllss as a structural engineer, let me know!

No comments: