Day 43: The Warped Wall

Denver, CO to Idaho Springs, CO — 45.8 mi, 4612 ft

After a few days of beating around the bush, it finally came time to face the rockies head on, resulting in an elevation graph that looks very much like the notorious final obstacle from the TV Series, American Ninja Warrior.

But, before that, we biked out of Denver and into Golden, Colorado. I’d never heard of golden, but it holds a lot of sentimental value to native Denverites, like Nate. This seems to be due to the presence of Woody’s pizza, which is known for its $18.99 all-you-can-eat pizza buffet– a deal that seems too good to be true in the Big 26. The original rest stop was a coffee shop, so Nate and I made the executive decision to move it to Woody’s Pizza (notably after I was scammed for an $8 lemonade in a mason jar by the original coffee shop rest stop). We went to Woody’s, and I just got an order of fried pickles. Nate, on the other hand, dove head first into the all-you-can-eat buffet. I lost count of the number of slices he ate, but I do recall that he had a very diverse selection of different types of pizza, including one with pineapple.

Afterwords, we went down to clear creek, which ran down the northern edge of town. There were a bunch of people tubing down the light rapids. 

We had the bright idea to go down the rapids in our “floating dock” as it is branded. It’s basically a glorified air mattress with just enough room for all of us to sit. We ended up going down the river three times as people watched in awe and confusion as we sometimes successfully, sometimes unsuccessfully slid down small waterfalls on our “floaty.”

Afterwards, we changed back into our biking gear and started on the largest climb of the trip so far: 2,000 feet over 10 miles. It wasn’t as bad as we thought.

At the top, we met this other cyclist who told us there were bison in a nearby meadow. Nate and I biked to the meadow, but we didn’t see any bison. 

I’ve noticed that climbs in the Rockies are usually in the format of a long uphill followed by a long downhill. In the Appalachians, it’s a lot of repetitive up, down, up, down– usually shorter, steeper climbs with shorter downhills. I much prefer the format of climbs in the Rockies, because the climbs are rewarded with long downhills where you can effectively cash out on your hard work. In Appalachia, you are constantly just moving on to the next climb without much reward, and it’s a lot more exhausting. However, the elevation can really get to you when you make it to the top of climbs in the Rockies; I think most of us have found ourselves a lot more winded, even nauseated at times.

After our climb, we had a nice descent (mostly) into Idaho Springs. We went through some roads that were closed for construction, but the workers were chill and we kept pressing forward. By the time we got to the place where we were staying, I was really feeling sick, so I ate the delicious pasta prepared by Aarushi and Nunu, then went to sleep immediately. My day ended there. Since I’ve chosen to write this blog in 1st person limited perspective, I can only say that it seems possible that my teammates took advantage of a hot tub at the place we were staying, because I saw bathing suits hanging up to dry in the morning.

Today was just a warmup for The Big Day. The Continental Divide is now staring us straight in the eye. I think my biggest worry, as a sea level dweller, is altitude sickness. Find out how it goes in two days!

– Drew