gragravar

So here is the ride summary:

What a great day. I met my friend Jay (gietl)
at 6:45am at Foothills BMW for the ride. (BTW -
thanks Jay for most of the text of this summary
which he posted on another site) We hit the road
around 7:20am. We did the entire morning route
which first took us over Squaw Pass, then up I-70
through the tunnel, then through Copper Mountain
onto Leadville over Fremont Pass. From Leadville
we headed to Buena Vista, then onto the Monarch
Mountain Lodge for lunch about 3 miles short of
the summit of Monarch Pass.


We toyed with the idea of doing the entire
afternoon route, which would have taken us
through Gunnison, then onto Sagauche and back
through Salida. But due to needing to be back in
Denver for a BBQ last night, we opted for the
"shortcut" and headed back down Monarch Pass and
back through Buena Vista and down to Denver via
285 through Fairplay.

The scenery was wonderful for this somewhat
Southern route (compared to last year). All in
all I tallied 427 miles from my door to my return
home.

We made good time all in all, we got hit by some
rain, which I blame solely on the slow moving
traffic in front of us. We could have beat that
little storm if it wasn't for them.


The terrifying highlight of the day (if you can
call it that) was some dumb *** Coyote that
thought he'd try to end his life and take as many
people with him as possible. As we were on our
way South into Buena Vista we were in a single
lane, the other side had two lanes (passing lane)
and we had the divided yellow for passing, we
were among 4 bikes that all engaged in the pass
into the passing lane on the other side, coming
up in the traffic lane was a car, no biggie, then
a Coyote decided to meaner into the road.
Everyone hit the brakes, I was side by side with
the RV we were passing and would have had no exit
room if the oncoming car had decided to swerve
around the coyote. scary! It all turned out
well though as the coyote changed his mind and
headed back off the road, but not before giving
us all a huge adrenaline rush.

Anyway, it was a great ride. I look forward to next years!

here are a few pics:

<img src="http://www.showyourmedia.com/files/1186328734.JPG">

<img src="http://www.showyourmedia.com/files/1186328755.JPG">

<img src="http://www.showyourmedia.com/files/1186328811.jpg">

<img src="http://www.showyourmedia.com/files/1186328778.JPG">

<img src="http://www.showyourmedia.com/files/1186328832.JPG">

gietl

Aww yeah, was a great time. I am a little sore today still, but not as bad as I was a few weeks ago. Sorry to hear you got stuck in that rain last night.

In that first picture, I am the guy up close in the hi-vis jacket.

I only logged about 374 miles, but that is by far my longest ride in one day. Next year I hope to do the whole route.

M954

Very nice, you guys are lucky to have such beautiful roads and scenery out there.