choco pasta and snickers

Andy's brother Trevor joined us last night(Friday) in anticipation of a long mountainous ride up to Steamboat Springs on Saturday. To fuel up properly Natalie made some wonderful sesame seed chicken pasta (yummm!) for us to chow on. Dessert was a new thing that we have never had before. Chocolate and orange pasta with orange chocolate sauce.... Andy loves orange chocolate, so this was a special treat for him. Pasta for dessert? A new concept for sure, but it was rather tasty! A little orangy for me, would have been a little better with just plain chocolate sauce I think, but it was still pretty good.
Saturday the plan was to be on our way by 8:00 a.m in order to avoid any afternoon showers. Once again Natalie made an amazing feast, oatmeal pancakes, which we proceed to slather in just about every topping imaginable. I top mine with pnut butta and honey, Andy topped his with Orange chocolate sauce (imagine that...), syrup and butta were also available as toppings. So with all this we didn't leave until about 9:30. I figured it was about a 5 hour ride, so Natalie was planning on leaving 4 hours after us, in order to arrive about the same time.
It was an amazing ride, lots of climbing, topping out at over 9000 ft. in elevation. There was one 6 mile downhill that was quite amazing, and one at least 4-5 mile climb, that was pretty crappy... After about 5 hours, we arrived in Steamboat, completely exhausted and spent, and ready to demolish some food at the Steamboat Smokehouse! Just like I had remembered from previous visits, the beer was large and cold, and the BBQ was fabulous. Just what the Dr. ordered to replace the 3000 calories I had just burned.
All in all, it was an awesome ride with good friends, and a beautiful day in the Colorado high country.

Oh yeah... by the way I had my first SNICKERS in over 2-3 years. And I love Snickers!!! We once had one in our Fridge in plain view as motivation to stick to our diets, and after over a year or so of looking at it everyday, I finally threw it away. It was wonderful to finally eat one! A taste I will relish for a while to come, for it takes a ride like this to deserve something that good!

Big shout out to my lovely wife for coming to pick us up in Steamboat. That would have really been a long ride home (170 miles). It may have been a little bit of a stressful drive for her, but she persevered in order to join us for some BBQ and Beer and intriguing conversation. In return I bought her a new pair of smartwool socks (nice guy hey?)