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August 3, 2008 – Boulder Colorado

Ride Boulder Classics ( Sugarloaf, Flagstaff)

Well today was our first real day of riding and the weather was really nice in the morning.  We met for coffee in the morning at the courtyard and were off by 0700 to ride the Boulder classic climbs.  As it turns out the GPS gave confusing directions in downtown Boulder so we missed the initial climb and moved on to climbing Sugarloaf Mountain.

The climb was not overly difficult, but it had fantastic scenery.

When we neared the summit,  I saw this interesting fence running through  the field. The mountain in the background is actually the peak of Sugarloaf Mountain.

The views of Boulder were amazing. This picture doesn’t capture how spectacular it was.

Here Paul is powering his way to the top.

We had a good descent until we noticed that Bill wasn’t behind us. 

As it turns out, he had another flat. We got some help from a Boulder resident who gave Bill a ride to the bottom of the climb.

Here’s Bill testing his wheel.

Everyone here seems to be extremely friendly as well as being extremely fit.  It seems that this place has the lowest Body Mass Index in the country. We decided to skip the next climb Magnolia as we needed to get Bill’s bike to a shop to determine why he was flatting.  While he was doing that (and they fixed it), Tom, Paul and I headed off to the next climb of the day, Flagstaff Mountain.

While we had been up Sugarloaf, the temperature had increased significantly and now it was very hot.  Here is Paul and Tom riding towards the base of the climb.

The climb was steep, but not terrible as there were lot’s of switchbacks.

The views of Boulder were also great.

I ended up bailing a couple of miles from the top due to heat, but Tom and Paul rode to the top which turned out to be quite anticlimactic.

There were no views other than a bunch of mail boxes.

We then returned to the hotel, had our showers and headed off to see what our rental house near Leadville looked like.  Before we left, we stopped at Chipotle Grill and had a couple of footballs and burrito salads.  Those footballs had a long life as they started causing intestinal distress before we even got to Leadville.
We learned that you never want to head into Denver on a Sunday night as it seems the entire city must leave and head for the mountains.  There was a monster traffic jam heading back into the city that must have been 20 miles long.

Not too long before we got off I-70, we passed through the Eisenhower Tunnel. This was interesting to me as I remember learning about this tunnel when I was in Grade school.

We stopped in Leadville at the Safeway to buy some groceries and discovered that Leadville seems to be a forgotten city that stopped any development in the 1800’s with the mining activity. The town itself is very depressing with the exception that there is a concerted effort to paint the houses in a Victorian style, but with loud pastel colors.  (Note: We’d learn later in the week that there is actually some neat places like Rosies Brewpub which claims to be the highest brewpub in the world at 10,000+ feet.)
We had to pass through two livestock gates and drive a terribly rutted gravel and dirt road for almost 4 miles to get to the house.  We were pleasantly surprised when we got here to fins that the house was great.

This is the living room area.

There are large windows all along the wall that look out into the Rocky Mountains. Here is the view:

Here is the view from out on the road.

We had pasta for dinner and got ready for the next day.

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