The Foot of the Mountain

Writing my first state-side entry on 'Only Forward' I kinda feel like I'm imposing. So far all I've done is hire a behemoth SUV and drink a load of beer. Dr Hamilton however has reached this great town of Boulder not via supersonic speeds but by human power. Strangely, after my third glass of this moreish 'Fleur' wine Kelv bought from an off-license the size of an Asda, that feeling of imposing is diminishing rapidly.

So this is where it gets even more interesting. Mountains. Snow capped, bear infested, lion prowled, wind ravaged. Still seems hard to imagine sat here in a warm little mountain hut in Boulder, but tomorrow I'll get a proper taste of whats to come. An old friend of my Dad's lives most of the year in Boulder, when he's not on the Continent reporting for his magazine VeloNews. I'm meeting up with him at 8am outside a popular bikers coffee shop on Broadway, where we head out for his birthday ride into the mountains. A nice 60 miler to knock out the cobwebs and test out the bike thoroughly.

Today's been spent in various bike shops parting with some serious dollars and using the well used but expensive mantra 'a trip of this scale warrants the best equipment'. I did a couple of short rides today to get the jet lag out my legs, following the Boulder creek offroad from the motel, then taking the Four Mile canyon up into the hills. I still can't begin to explain how good the Tricross is, it excelled again on the offroad sections and ripped it up on the tarmac. Sell the car, sell the kids, sell the house. Buy one. You'll never look back :)

For those that are wondering, I can confirm that Kelvin is still pretty much as sane as he was when I last saw him, though he does seem prone to bouts of laughter at his own jokes. Not a great deal new there, but the jokes appear to be formed in his own head without him actually speaking them aloud.

Plans now are swinging between spending the next month in Boulder and sacking off the whole trip, or more likely starting out on Tuesday for Fort Collins then onto Laramie. We've changed the route before hitting Vancouver, instead of Seattle being the final goal in the USA, we're switching to the Pacific and Lewis & Clarks Fort Clatsop. We're aiming to ride the NorthWest Passage over the Rocky's into Idaho, so Clatsop couldn't be a better final destination before heading north for Vancouver.

I still can't fathom that at some point in the next month that we'll actually be in Vancouver, after passing through Wyoming with the Grand Teton and Yellowstone parks, mountainous Montana, Lewis & Clarks Idaho, then finally Washington state with the Nez Perce Indian reserve and Christ knows what else in between. How Kelv comprehends it I've no idea, though I have a suspicion he's been snorting his chain lube to cope with the immensity of it all.

Back to now. We're crashed out in the hut after a filling meal and interesting chin wag with some locals, second bottle of wine near empty and some deep techno on the laptop. I'm totally blown away of what I've seen of Boulder so far. Bob why did you ever leave?! Its a cyclists paradise, where all fanatics go to die after sacrificing themselves in the mountains to the God that is Gravity. If tonights drunken ramblings are anything to go by, we're both moving here...