Just a meandering ride on my Salsa Casseroll out and around Fort Collins on a nice Sunday.
This is on Bingham Hill Road overlooking Bellvue, Co.
And much farther east, this is a beet staging area just north of Wellington, Co. Towards the end of the year this field will be filled with mountains of beets. This machine has something to do with it, but I’m not sure exactly what.
I went exploring north of Fort Collins aiming for the unpaved Owl Canyon road. This is the stretch of road to the west of where Taft Hill Road ends. It’s a nice surface, great scenery, but way too many fast moving cars and it only goes 2 miles before it runs into CR72 which is worse.
No big deal, there are plenty of other interesting roads. I’m not sure what this was, but it looked tempting in the heat.
Here’s what the country looks like on the north end of Taft Hill Road; wide open spaces.
And here’s a cornfield just north of Wellington.
I’m experimenting with Syntace C2 SL aero-bars since I’ve seen pictures of Fargo’s set up with them. So far, they make the front end feel very heavy, it’s nice to be able to flop over and take the weight off my hands, and you can hang all sorts of crap off them.
They may be a huge pain-in-the-arse for commuting, though, so I may use them as “Special Occasion” add-ons.
Sunday (today) seemed like a good day for exploring the dirt roads East of I-25. Here’s one (it was looking rainy, but it didn’t).
Here’s another.
It occurred to me that my Fargo would be worth the price even if all I did was the occasional back road ride like this one. And it would also be worth the price if all I ever used it for was commuting. Lucky me, I get to do both.
Saturday I rode to Bingham Hill Road and from there up Horsetooth. There was an accident and the road was closed just south of Dixon Dam (the one by Hughes Stadium) so I turned around at backtracked to Bellvue. I wanted to log a few more miles before I headed home so I rode five miles up Rist Canyon.
This ride elevation profile I got from my Garmin 305 caught my eye, probably because I’ve never seen Rist and Horsetooth together on the same scale.
The first five miles of Rist Canyon is the easy part (it tops out at 8,000 feet six miles up the road) and it may not look it from this profile, but the Horsetooth section was a harder ride than the Rist section.
Looks Can Be Deceiving
I took my Fargo on a little mixed terrain jaunt Sunday, heading for the Soapstone Prairie open space which is north of Fort Collins on the Wyoming border. I packed a lunch planning on spending a full day exploring.
I never got there. Rawhide Flats road turns into a nasty combination of loose gravel and washboard and I don’t have a clue how to ride it. The only other bikes I saw out there were on the tops of cars so maybe it’s just not rideable (or maybe I just lack the experience and skills to handle it? Probably). I tipped over (I was going too slow to claim I skidded out) about five miles short of the entrance to Soapstone and that completely drained my enthusiasm for the project so I turned tail and headed back the way I came.
Red Mountain is another open space adjacent to Soapstone so I headed west and found the approach road was much, much more to my liking. This is wide open country with unlimited vistas, many cows, and only one house that I could see.
I rode eight or nine miles of it and flatted my rear tire. I couldn’t find the hole, the wind was blowing so hard I couldn’t hear anything. I had only seen two cars in the last hour so I decided that thirty miles from home in the middle of nowhere was no place to tempt fate. I mounted my spare tube and headed for home (slowly, that headwind was COLD!).
So I didn’t make it to either of the open spaces, but I don’t care. Red Mountain road was beautiful, and there are hundreds of miles of other roads just like it and I’ve got all summer to explore them.
This morning (Sunday) the sun was shining and I needed to kill an hour or so before lunch. No problem, I just hop on my Fargo and go for a ride. I started wandering around and ended up riding on the Poudre River bike trail from Timberline to Lincoln.
I thought the trail simply ended at Lemay and you had to get onto the surface streets and dodge the heavy traffic on Lemay to get to… I dunno. The trail picks up again around Mulberry, but I never knew how to make the connection.
Oh well, you come up on the wrong side of Lemay, and then ride downhill on this sidewalk, against traffic, and join up with the trail at the river where it goes under Mulberry. What I can’t figure out is why they built this giagantus ped/bike bridge along Mulberry over the Poudre and who ever uses it? And why can’t they add 100 feet or so to the bike path so it’s continuous and you don’t have to ride on the dang sidewalk??
Some things can never be explained.
There are some really pretty spots along this trail, but mostly the river is hidden from view. And there are some really crappy, bumpy, and narrow sections that are miserable even on a fat tire bike, but basically the Poudre River trail is a huge asset for riders and would be a great place to put a super bikeway.
This is a section of good pavement.
Anyway, I can’t think of a better way to kill an extra hour on a sunny Sunday morning.
The weather today was very nice with 55F, all sunshine and negligible wind, so I burned some vacation hours and left work early to take a ride.
Man, do I feel like a slug!
This winter has been brutal and I’m already 700 miles behind last year. So it was good to get out on the road today, along with 50 million other riders, many of whom passed me like I was standing still.
OMG I’M SLOW!!!
OK, I was only passed six times on a 35 mile ride and this was my first ride of appreciable distance since Jan 1, but even so, I couldn’t hold them off to save my life. Not even close.
Under normal conditions I can save a tiny shred of dignity by muttering “Younger guy, better bike” to myself. I’m old, I ride comfy slow bikes so of course I’m going to get passed.
But the sad truth is, even if we traded bikes and they were old and I was young, they’d still pass me. Bah! I hate being this slow.
My major effort in 2009 was climbing and I spent most of my time riding Horsetooth and Rist Canyon. I’m going to stick to those routes but this year I’m going to work on improving my speed. I’m going to pay attention to my average speed just like I have with mileage and feet climbed.
I’m also in the market for a new light, stiff bike (yes, I already have one picked out).
I will never be fast compared to the roadies around here (or anyone else for that matter), but I think I can be faster than what I am now.
And that will have to suffice.
I was riding through Waverly last weekend and saw a new sign “12mi (19km) to Soapstone Prairie Natural Area”. I was vaguely aware the city was working on new open space so I looked it up when I got home.
From the city webpage
You can read the city website and know everything I know about Soapstone Prairie:
http://www.fcgov.com/naturalareas/finder/soapstone
http://www.fcgov.com/naturalareas/pdf/soapstone-brochure.pdf
I’m psyched. It’s about 25mi (40km) from my front door and is set in a part of the country that calls to me on a gut level. It could be Rohan (from the books, not the movie).
I’m guessing you ride 5-10mi on unpaved county roads to get to the natural area. I’ve ridden all the paved roads in that area, but little of the unpaved parts.
Have you ridden the Soapstone Prairie Natural Area trails? Have you ridden the county roads around it? Does this look as awesome to you as it does to me?
Will I see you up there this spring/summer?
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