Brrrr. When we left Silverton this morning it was below zero. We set out to give the famed Ophir Pass our best shot fully thinking we might have to turn back after having heard all sorts of horror stories. However as it turns out, we had the perfect machines for the job. It's amazing what can be achieved when your bike is small enough that you can ride it while still walking. The rockfall that fell earlier in the year? has...
Words. So many words. Epic, stunning, scary, exhilarating, challenging, fun, tough, rewarding. A heap of expletives in there too. We did it. We made it up and over Cinnamon, California, Hurricane, Corkscrew and whatever other pass was between Lake City and Silverton and yes there was some pushing involved. Cinnamon didn't feel terribly difficult to get up. Of course for some reason, we did not examine our map very carefully before hand and had it in our heads that it was...
Wow, another wonderful day of riding with beautiful views. Colorado is delivering on expectations. At lot of the scenery reminds us of parts of New Zealand but on a much bigger scale. Lots of elevation gain, through forests, which then top out with lovely views. Quite chilly throughout the day, rain jacket and heated grips on again. At one point it dropped to about 10 deg C (50F) most of the time it hovered around 17 deg C (62F). Interestingly enough,...
What a gorgeous day. Easy roads, great scenery and it smells nice. Although the clouds threatened to rain on us, we managed to stay ahead of any down pours. It got pretty darn chilly at one point, our gps app told us we were over 3000m (9842 feet) so that is probably why. Groms did OK at elevation as long as we didn't try to go fast. Heated grips and rain jacket kept us warm throughout the day. The roads here...
Sigh...
We think our little rest day has made us soft, cos the TAT kicked our butts today. A very early start saw us on the trail by 6:45am and 3 hrs later after only covering 100km, we had had enough. It was a mix of soft sand, occasional muddy puddles, wheel tracks that were either soft and sandy or had dried with hard edges. Regardless, once you got stuck in the wheel track it was a tough time getting out of...
Iron man movies +2, pop tarts +1, rear shock +1 We weren't sure what time our shock would arrive, so we got to have a nice little lie in today. Sim wandered over to the post office after breakfast and voila new barely used shock. While fitting it, the thunderstorms rolled in and we decided to stay another night. We spent a leisurely day doing not much of anything. Highlight of the day was being recognized at the gas station. The next 2 days...
Wow what a day. After yesterdays fast gravel, we thought we would be in for more of the same. If you think Oklahoma is boring, you need to ride it on a grom. We got off to a leisurely start this morning and once back on the TAT pootled along. Good gravel, cool temperatures, lots of wind farms and oil rigs to look at. It was very much straight roads with 90 degree turns here and there. One stretch of road...
kick stand spring -1, puncture +1 Straight, left, straight, right, straight etc...
Crawdad +1, kick stand sensor -1, rear shock -1 Trouble comes in twos. After yesterdays great riding, we were expecting more of the same. Not long on the trail, we came across a section of the TAT which was pretty unexpected. We were just following our little blue line on our GPS app (OSMAnd+) when the road turned from good gravel, to slightly muddy sandy stuff then steep rocky stuff reminiscent of the snow mobile trail we accidentally took on the MABDR...