We met Owen at 8AM at Motohaus Coffee hoping to fuel up with a little caffeine. Alas, they didn't open until later, so we hit the road. (Don't worry, the two morning caffeinators already had a little bit in them to get going.)
From the Fort, we head out through Masonville and found ourselves smack dab in the middle of the MS150 bike ride. It was a giant mess of people on (and all over) the road. I was glad to get away from them and their sketchy riding. We braved the traffic on US-34 for a while before heading up through Glen Haven (the scenic back way to Estes). The shop in Glen haven was perfect timing for a snack break. They have excellent cinnamon rolls.
On to Rocky Mountain National Park. I haven't been there in probably at least 5 years. The scenery is amazing. And so are the crowds. I like that national parks are around to preserve land, but they also tend to be tourist magnets. I think I'd prefer to have more wilderness areas because they get a lot of the same protections but don't draw the crowds. Eventually we made it through crowds of people stopped by the side of the road taking pictures of elk and stopped at the Alpine Visitors Center. It gets a little chilly at 11,000 feet, so I threw on a fleece before we headed down to Granby.
The western part of the park was way less crowded and we cruised through there while enjoying the scenery. We rolled up to Christine's mom's cafe in Granby around 1PM and I enjoyed some french toast for lunch. Breakfast is good any time of day, although that burger Owen had was making my mouth water.
We decided to head north out of Granby to Walden instead of going back through RMNP. Owen and I traded bikes for a bit on this stretch. Owen tells me my bike stops "ticking over MPH" at around 110. I wouldn't know.
Everything had been pretty smooth up to this point. Then Christine's battery died. We were stopped at the side of the road somewhere between Walden and Gould (AKA: the middle of nowhere). After some fiddling around, Owen managed to get the thing bump started and we decided it would be a good idea to leave Christine's bike running the rest of the time.
Christine was really ripping through some of the corners in the canyon and it was really fun to be behind her and watch. As we neared Fort Collins, though, we were all getting a little tired after a long day in the saddle and Christine and I took it easy through the remaining corners.
Just as we were getting back into town, Christine's bike started surging and lurching. She thought she may be running out of gas, so she flipped her fuel line over to the reserve until we got to the gas station. Since we had to stop the bike, we had to bump start it again, and this time it took a little more effort. The bike just wasn't behaving well. Even after we got it started, the tachometer was bouncing all over the place and Christine was having a really hard time keeping the bike running. Eventually, we ditched the bike in a parking lot and Christine rode home on the back of my bike so we could go home and get some dinner.
After dinner, we drove out the bike with some jumper cables and some leftover-takeout-Chinese-fueled energy. The bike started right up, but was still running poorly. Christine drove slowly behind me in the car while I nursed this thing along at 10 MPH. It was actually really funny. I figured out that the poor running was clearly related to the electrical system because when I would turn on the blinker the bike would surge along in unison with the flashing light. And if I turned the brights on, it ran better. Pretty humerous. The bike made it back into our garage where it's sits awaiting a new battery. Hopefully that's all it is.
It was a long day, but a fun one. I'm pretty wiped out after two long days, but I'm pretty sure that means it was an awesome weekend.
Sounds like a really fun ride. That route is gorgeous in a car, and I bet more so on a bike.
ReplyDeleteThe summer weather is re-vamping my desire to get a motorcycle.