road trip

Here's the plans for anyone who doesn't have them yet:
Friday 12/19 (Nicky's birthday!) - leave the mountains
Saturday 12/20 - arrive in LaSalle-Peru
Thursday 12/25 - head to Ttown
Monday 12/29 - travel on to Springfield
Friday 1/2 - head for the mountains

Hope to see you all on our trip home!

Roads, Bike Trails, and Dog Trails

Some people build roads for us to drive our cars on..... Some people build bike trails for us to ride our 2 wheel pedal bikes on....... I build dog trails for the dogs to run on in the snow! So yah, it has been snowing here quite a bit. The past two days we have gotten about 24 inches, with another 36 inches supposed to fall before Thursday morning. What are the little weiners supposed to do when the snow is over their heads??? If they can't get around they refuse to go outside, but if they have a trail to run on then they are more than willing to go out and pee and poo and run and chase each other. So, I go out in the back yard and build a maze-like trail for them to chase each other on. The trail's walls are now about 2 feet high, and the trail itself is rather long. It's quite awesome watching them chase each other around the trail!!! First you put on some warm winter boots. Second, you go out with the dogs and just randomly walk around the yard breaking the trail. Third, the dogs follow along behind you and pack the trail down firm. You should take precaution not to let sections of the trail get too close to each other, or the dogs will cheat and jump the bank between the trails... Then whadya know.... Voila! you now have a first class doggie trail!



I was able to get up to Vail on Sunday. I was planning to go up by myself because Natalie had to work on Sunday. I gave Mark, the 7th grade science teacher from work, a call Saturday night and he said sure, he wanted to go along and he would drive. We talked about going to the Beav cause they have free parking, but decided to go for the best powder and the big mountain at Vail. Normally parking is $25.00, but since the garage was full, we were able to park for free on the frontage road. Bottom line on the snowboarding is the snow was Phenomenal! Among the best powder runs I have ever had!!! We hit the backbowls early and were able to get some good powder runs. But because of the cold..... single digits..... with negative windchills.... we decided to get among the trees on the front side of the mountain. Here we really found some good powder stashes to tear up. The cold eventually forced us off the mountain just a little early at about 2:30. Mark dropped me off at the BOOT where Natalie was working, and I had a Miller High Life and a Gypsum Grilled Cheese with Tomato Basil soup to dip it in. The beer could've been a bit better, but for 2 bucks what ya gonna do? An excellent end to an awesome day!

Gettin Cozy and Guacamole.....

One of the wonderful things from the times spent at home was the guacamole made by my sis and mother. So simple and yet so delish! An avocado and some guacamole mix. Yummy!!!
All 3 doggies decided they had to lay on me for a bit. This is what happens when you turn the space heaters off. Pretty cool though how well they all get along with each other.
Yah, you guessed it... I guess Sophie really does like me..... She didn't mind me laying my head on her while she was laying on the pillow on the couch.

SNOWBOARDING!!!!!!

Last weekend I got out on Saturday morning for a bit of snowboarding with Alana and Torrey. There were about 1500 people in line for the lift after I purchased my first ever SEASON PASS! WOW! I have a season pass, I always dreamed about that moment! Natalie will be getting hers this weekend on Saturday. She and Alana are taking a full day lesson that is provided for free by the school district. A $135.00 value!






I was sitting below this sign and Torrey came around and stopped right below me and sat down between my legs.... just almost popped down on my lap. Felt a little..... weird.... :) Alana just had to get a picture.

We took the ECO bus up to Vail from Eagle for 6 bucks round trip. Good deal since you dont have to deal with parking and all in Vail. The snow was phenomenal! Excellent powder. Man it felt good to be back on my board! It has been about two years since Natalie and I went to Breckenridge. I was worried about forgetting how to ride, but it all came back pretty naturally.

Right after I got off the first lift, I decided to take the bull by the horns and ride off a small ledge. There was a lot of powder on the landing and I didn't have the nose of the board up high enough, so I face planted. Here you can see the leftover snow sticking to my peach fuzz....




Beautiful picture of the snow in the trees and on the slope. 75" thus far on the mountain. 0" in Eagle around the house. They are only about 25 miles apart......















Below is a picture of Alan practicing her smile. My good deed for the day was teaching her to take off her board and sit on it to use it as a sled on the flat catwalk areas. Sweet board Alana!

Fighting ILLINI

The fighting Illini had a great game tonight against Clemson as part of the ACC - BIG TEN Challenge. As I type this there are still about 7 minutes left, and IL has a 2 pt lead. Hope they get the win, it would be a huge one! Anyway, I rode my bike on the trainer tonight for about 1 and a half hours, which is a long time for me on the trainer, while watching this game. I was going to go sockless, as BlackBerry taught me to do, but instead decided that it may be good luck if I wore my Illinois Cycling socks from my sis Anne Marie who attends the U of I.


On another note, I think this is the weekend that we get to begin snowboarding! Hopefully Natalie gets to go with me one day, right now she is working on Saturday and Sunday. I know she would like to get out and practice the S turns she has been doing in her mind for the past 2 years! We got 30+ inches of snow over the weekend in both Beaver Creek and Vail with another 6-8 inches supposed to fall this week.

The last two weeks...give or take

Here's the deal...the computer broke and blogging is difficult -actually impossible - without a computer. We do still have the work laptops, but neither of us really has the complete hang of Macs yet and we can't upload pictures on the Mac, which takes a lot of the fun out of the blogging experience. So, anyway, we have had a broken computer which should be returned to us shortly. And then there will be some awesome pictures to send out on the blog :-)

A drama:
A few weeks ago we had the oil changed on the car. One week after that, we were driving in to Denver to get Anne Marie and Cathy and suddenly, going up Vail Pass, the car was lurching and going about 30 mph. So we (mostly just me) were freaking out because I am not a big fan of semis riding right up onto our bumper, especially when the only thought going through my mind is how easily they could push us over the side of the mountain! The car reacted much the same way getting up to Eisenhower Tunnel. I only cried once :-) Nick managed to get the car down to the flat-lands, where it performed perfectly, of course. We considered getting a rental car but were hopeful the car issue was just a fluke. Unfortunately, the car freaked out going up the foothills as we were coming back home, so we had to drive back across Denver to the airport (for the 2nd time that day) and get a beauty of a rental. The car did get fixed by some super-nice mechanics in Golden at Planet Honda and we now have new front brakes, a flushed transmission and clean fuel injectors.

2 visits:
Nick's sister was in Denver for an interview with FOCUS, a missionary group she is looking at being a part of after graduation. We spent the day with her on Sunday after her work was done. So we got to hang out with her, eat at Woody's (fire-grilled pizza!) and just spend time catching up. We picked up Nick's mom, Cathy, when we had Anne Marie with us, then left Anne Marie in Denver to catch her flight home, and brought Cathy back up to Eagle.
Cathy came to stay with us for 5 days. She found something to do most days on her own since we were in work, but I think she was really able to explore the area. She did lots of hiking and walking and even spent a day working in Nick's classroom with him. Nick took a day off and went hiking in Minturn with her; they started in Minturn but made it to the back bowls of Vail. It was a lot of fun to share all of the things we like about the Eagle area with her!

Thanksgiving:
We had a great day spending time here at home with some of our new friends. It all started waking up to a slight dusting of snow, which we hoped would stick around but was gone by 12. Church was nice, but we didn't know we were supposed to have taken our bread and beverage for lunch to have our meal blessed by Father Bob. One little boy brought his Capri Sun up to the altar as his drink for Thanksgiving meal! It was cute :-) We had all of the traditional fixings, plus the Macy's parade and lots of football. Tiffany and Niles brought some awesome stuffing and sweet potatoes. I hear the apple pie was also superb! Deb & Kent brought little weenies for appetizers. Poor Kent had to make these silly appetizers to make Nick happy; what they didn't know is I had already made some too! Jeff and his lovely girlfriend Jess (who was visiting Eagle from California) brought rolls and jalapeno artichoke dip with some awesome bread garlic crackers. They also did all the dishes and I will be eternally grateful to them for this! We talked lots, played Scattergories and just had a great time.

Now what???
Well, now that Thanksgiving is over, I can put up Christmas decorations. I'll get started on that today. I'm sure Nick is very excited to carry up all those heavy boxes for me! We will be getting a real tree, so I'll also go down today and get our tag for the tree. Only $10 to the forest ranger for our tree permit, which will allow us to go out in the forest and cut down a tree to haul back. Torrey and Alana will be going on that trip with us, so we'll wait to get the tree til next weekend when they are home.

Also, today is our deadline for ordering the new house. Nick's going to call on it later to make sure everything is a go. The interest rates dropped earlier this week and we signed on to a great rate. So, after today, much more house information to come!

And.........pictures to come once the other computer is fixed :-)

A Special Visit

Yay...we had a visitor! The much-anticipated visit from my sister finally happened. Lindsey flew out on Saturday via Peoria-Denver-Eagle flights. She wasn't a big fan of the puddle jumper she rode from Denver to Eagle, but she made it right on time. We spent Saturday showing her our school, the new house and just basically around all of Eagle and Gypsum. Saturday night we had a few friends (Torrey and Alana from Cali, Torrey teaches with Nick & I and Alana teaches 2nd grade right down the road from the middle school - I think Nick has mentioned them in previous blogs) over for hamburgers (Lindsey insisted upon her cheeseburger!) and a hotly contested game of Phase Ten. Alana pulled it out somehow...no clue how really...and that was our night. CORRECTION: NICK WON PHASE TEN!!! my bad :-)

Sunday we went to church then ventured up to Vail pass for some snowshoeing. It was pretty awesome. Lindsey was very excited that she didn't have to be carried back to the car on a stretcher, so I think it was a pretty successful trip. There was snow (duh...snowshoes) up there but not too much snow just yet. Pretty much the perfect amount for our hike.Monday I took the day off. Lindsey and I had planned to do a hike (Hanging Lake) but the weather was less than pleasant, so we just drove down to Glenwood to look at the pretty views of the canyon. We were lucky enough to see big horn sheep and some mule deer while out on our drive. After we drove the canyon, we decided to go up to Sylvan Lake and catch some more views. For those of you who don't know, I'm a little (or a lot, depending on who you talk to) squirmish on nasty roads...especially those covered in snow and ice. So, Sylvan Lake took every ounce of bravery I had (and maybe some I didn't have??), but we survived. We (aka Lindsey, the one who wasn't driving) got some beautiful pictures of the snow on the lake. The roads up at Sylvan Lake are a red dirt, which turns to mush when it's wet. Which means we slid down the mud worse than when we were on snow or ice. That was a bit freaky, and I did actually stop the car at one point and say OK, I have to take a deep breathe before I can continue driving. Monday's drives were followed by an awesome dinner (with Nicholas, Torrey and Alana) at The Rittenhouse Restaurant in Gypsum. Their Monday night special? $5 burgers with waffle fries and $2 drinks...what could be better than that??

Lindsey was dropped off at the airport this morning (it's fun getting up at 4 am!) with a few hugs and some good wishes. Apparently, it will be a good while before she tries the Denver-Eagle flights again (mountains cause turbulance...what else can I say??), which is fine...we can always drive the 2+ hours over 2 passes to go pick her up :-)

After School Soccer Club and Mt. Lions

The kids in the after school club, do homework after school on Monday and Wednesday, and then on Friday they get to play soccer. I first played with them a couple of weeks ago and we played outdoors on the school field. Tonight I played with them again but we played indoor in the gym. The social studies teacher (who is also new this year from Cali) and I were on the same team. We had 4 teams, all pretty evenly matched. It was a blast. I always forget how much I enjoy playing soccer. It is really fun playing with the Jr. High kids and seeing them learn more everytime we play. I think all but 1 or 2 of the kids are of hispanic heritage. It reminds me of the couple of times that I played soccer with the Mexicans that worked in Effingham. It's really cool to see their passion for the game.

In other news, there was a reverse 911 call last night to some of our neighbors, alerting them to a Mt. Lion being in town and to keep their pets inside. WOW! A mt. lion right in town just down the street from the house.... Wrigley woulda tore him up is probably why he didn't stop by for Sophie's birthday party..... (more on that to come). As we get more snow up in the high country the animals are starting to move down into town. We have seen mule deer in town the past 2 days, 6 of them this morning. In a couple more weeks we have been told the Elk will begin to move into town as well.

A Day of Firsts!!!

Hi! My name is Nicholas Joseph Brummer and yesterday on the 3rd of November, at the ripe old age of 27, I voted in a United States of America election for the very first time! I know, I know, you ask why did I vote so soon after turning 18..... Seriously though, for some reason I really got into this election. I believe it was because there are so many issues facing our great country that I have a personal interest in. Whatever the reasons, I am kind of ashamed that I haven't voted before this, yet at the same time excited that I finally have voted.

We are also witnessing a piece of history, it is the first time in the history of the U.S.A., that we have had an African American President. I pray that he leads our country in a good direction and fights for the issues which I find so important.

Side Note: I had a cool encounter tonight with one of the horned kind. The District Office is a block from our house and I had a meeting with the powers that be to learn about a couple of new intensive reading programs that we are implementing at school. Training was from 4:30-6:00. I got done about 6:30 and was walking home and all of a sudden I see this shadow walk out in front of me on the sidewalk.... (Eyes were still adjusting....) Then all of a sudden I was seeing clearly. About 3 sidewalk cracks in front of me stood a buck mule deer. A small rack of about 8 points or so, and I was like WOW! COOL! Then all of a sudden, I was thinking this thing could freak and decide to attack me, so I started waving my arms and yelling like a madman. The deer just stood and stared at me, like I was some sort of weirdo! (debatable...) Then he kind of trotted back the direction he had come to stand on the street to wait until after the strange thing (me) had passed. After reflecting on this special encounter, I realize how cool it really was, the thing was about 5-6 feet away from me and I didn't even see it until the last second.

Truly a night of firsts.

FRUITA!!!!!

One day earlier this week when Natalie and I were riding in the car I suggested we take an end of the season camping trip down I-70 to Fruita, CO. She was all about it, so Friday night I loaded up the car while we waited for Trick-or-Treaters (we had 0 :( We had gotten a camp and trail map and suggestions from James, one of the teachers at work. Fruita is really known as a high desert Mt. Biking paradise! It's known for how smooth it's trails are. We had Saturday school on Saturday morning from 7-10 and then headed down. It's about 2 hours west toward Utah, only about 20 miles from the Utah border.

The camping is free and we were able to get a great site. We were in the North Fruita Desert area, a.k.a 18 road Book Cliffs recreation area. The site is down over a ledge off the road and set back among the juniper trees. You can't see, but right behind the tent is about a 20 foot drop down into a gulley. After we arrived we got the tent and camp set up and went for a ride. When we returned I found creative ways to hang the bikes...
These are pictures of Natalie and I at the bottom of Prime Cut. We rode up Kesslers Run and down Prime Cut for about 7 miles of riding on sweet smooth singletrack that was rated Blue and Green. You shoulda seen Natalie, she was rippin it up. She was really doing good and it was fun being able to ride with her for a bit. As you can see the terrain is rather dry and barren, yet it was still very beautiful!

Thanks to Chef Natalie we had two amazing meals, pork chops and potatoes with red peppers and Coors Light for dinner, and hash browns and egg and sausage links for breakfast! Here is the Chef herself slaving away over the fire that I had built. I also did the dishes after dinner, although she did them after breakfast so I could go for a ride.
After breakfast we were talking about going for another ride, but unfortunately Natalie had an extremely swollen toe and her back was a little sore (due to the sleeping on rocks...), so she said she would stay with the dogs and clean up camp so that I could still go for a ride and hit some of the more difficult terrain. I ended up getting about 10 miles and rode some black diamond and double black trails. The picture above is on Joe's ridge, taken by Natalie down at camp about 1/4 mile away. This morning was an amazing ride! I did Joe's Ridge down to V7 road and over to Western Zippety. I took this trail up and then took a connector over to Zippety Do Dah and from there had an about 3 mile downhill/rolling section down Zippety Do Dah! These two ride were all along the top of spines and had some good steep drops, some rocks and jumps, and a few breathtaking climbs.

Will we go back? You betcha, next spring I think we will head back. There was good riding for the both of us and the camping was excellent! It was a great short trip with Natalie and the dogs.

Today, and Pumpkin Ale

So today it was 60 degrees and very sunny! Beautiful weather indeed. After two stressful days of school work and curriculum maps, I was ready to get out for a ride. Natalie went to tutor a high school student in Algebra 2, so I went out for a short ride on Boneyard. This trail is so cool being only about a 1/2 mile from the house. It's hard enough that it still presents a good workout and a chance to work on handling skills, yet easy and short enough that it only takes about 35 minutes tops to get up it. Then about another 5-10 minutes to get down via the Ice Rink trail. Shown are some pictures of Mr. Lister riding on the Boneyard trail. Up boneyard, and down ice rink. Resting at the top of boneyard, not for sure what he is trying to explain... prolly something about the amount of chocolate he ate in the past week or so......











When I got home, I popped open a Pumpkin Ale. I have had quite a few different brands of this beer, but this one is quite good. It is brewed by Buffalo Bills Brewery in California. Tastes a lot like pumpkin pie. I would recommend this if you can find it, and have a taste for pumpkin beers. And no I didn't ride and drink at the same time, that was only for the foto!

A Simple Day

Saturday was forecast to be beautiful, sunny and 67 degrees. So we decided it would be a great day for a hike. Nick had the perfect place in mind - Two Elk trail, where his mountain bike ride had ended a few weekends ago. That trail turned out to be a bit of a bust given the fact that the trail begins at a shooting range and many hunters were out for the 2nd week of rifle season. So, we moved on to a different place...the top of Vail pass. We found a nice trail:





There wasn't anything uber-special about this trail - no waterfall, or great view at the summit, nothing like that. But it was in the middle of a meadow, with a little pond, some snow hidden in the shady areas, and just lots of peacefulness. We took Wrigley with us and he loved exploring. Enjoy the pics below :-)

What a Drive!

Glenwood Canyon. The picture to the left shows the drive down I-70 through the canyon. It is so narrow that the only road that can fit through there is I-70, and also a bike path that runs alongside and underneath the interstate. (oh yeah, also a train track) I had to drive down to Glenwood Springs today to get the car looked at. (airbag light was on) It is about 30 minutes from Eagle, and has to be one of the most beautiful drives around. Everytime I drive through there (which isn't often) I am just amazed by the sheer size and beauty of the canyon. It just amazes me to think about how they were able to blast out the walls of the canyon to be able to build the road through there. In two of the spots, they had to tunnel through the rock because it was so narrow. The Colorado river runs right next to it, and the canyon wall climbs straight up on either side.

I/We have yet to ride the Glenwood Canyon Trail from Dotsero (or as my kids call it... Dotghetto for the trailer park there...) to Glenwood Springs, but will be sure to do it sometime in the future, if not yet this fall, then for sure next spring or summer. It is not a steep trail by any means, but is slightly downhill for the 16 mile length of it, then a slight uphill for the ride back, so I think it would be a nice ride for us to do together.

will you be my HONEY???

As I've aged... I have really developed a taste for some of the finer things in life. For example, good wine, crispy fresh veggies, fine micro brew and European beers, and HONEY! Yes, I said it honey is one of the finer things in life. We use it for many things, but three of my favorites have to be: pnut butta and honey on waffles, pnut butta and honey on pancakes, and my special honey and sweet dijon mustard glaze on porkchops. A true mountain man recently came into school to find out if anyone wanted and fresh high country honey. At 8 bucks for a 2 pound jar, I wasn't about to pass it up.

You can see the differences in the colors. That comes from different varieties of flowers. Pretty cool hey? The guy that brought in the one on the left informed me that the lighter the color is, the sweeter the honey tastes. Let me tell you what, I poured a little on my finger and it was phenomenal!!!! This stuff is AWESOME!!

Try some honey on your favorite snacks, it's an awesome source of natural sugars!!

Just like Grandma's....

OK! So on Sunday night I had a First! There have been a few firsts since we have moved to Colorado, but this was a different kind of first. I made my first pie! PIE!

I love pie!, apple, blackberry, RHUBARB, strawberry, strawberry rhubarb, among others. My grandma Brummer always makes the best pies, and Grandma Pruemer makes a mean strawberry pie not to mention Natalie's pies. The only problem with Natalie making some of them is that she just makes them and then I have to eat the whole thing (i hate that....), cause she doesn't want to try her rhubarb. SO I had a lot to live up to!

A co-worker brought in a bucket full of apples from a tree in her yard, so I asked Natalie if she could help me make an apple pie. Nads being the wonderful wife that she is say's, "of course dear, I will help you make a pie." ahhhh how sweet!.....

1st peel the apple's...... (This is where that Pampered Chef crap, that I tried to make Natalie get rid of at the garage sale,
comes in handy.)




















Then slice the apples in pieces. (also a nice pampered chef tool) :)



















After slicing the apples, I placed them in a big bowl (pampered chef) with some sugar, whole wheat flour and cinnamon.












Next was rolling out the dough. I first tried this with whole wheat flour, but the dough didn't roll out correctly. So.... I had to go to the store to pick up some all-purpose flour. This worked like a charm.

Natalie showed me how to roll the pie crust onto the rolling pin and then lay it out onto the pie plate. Worked like a charm.

Whad'ya know, but my pie turned out. Since it was now about 8:30 or so and I am getting old, I had to get to bed. (actually because I needed to get up at 4:45 to go work out) I didn't get to try any of my precious pie. But the next day I took it to school to share with our awesome staff! I of course had the first piece and I thought I had done a pretty awesome job! As you can see, it looks pretty amazing. The golden crust is my specialty!!!! Look at that smile... think I was excited????

EPIC:

EPIC:

Adj.

1.

epic - very imposing or impressive; surpassing the ordinary (especially in size or scale); "an epic voyage"; "of heroic proportions"; "heroic sculpture"

WOW!.... A co-worker/new friend invited me to do this ride with him and his buddy this week. It was a point to point ride, requiring a vehicle at both ends. They picked me up at about 7:30 this a.m. We drove up to drop a truck off in Minturn which would be the end of our ride, then all hopped in with James and drove to the top of Vail Pass, which was about another 15-20 minutes up I-70. The ride was Vail Pass to Minturn via the Boarman shortcut and Two Elks Trail. We parked at the top of Vail Pass and started off on dirt road at about 8:30ish with a temp of 38 degrees and about 10,500 ft in elevation. We climbed about 2 miles on the dirt/rock road until we came to a singletrack (Boarmans Shortcut). After hitting the singletrack we climbed for another 3-4 miles before topping out at TOP OF THE WORLD.

It was so hard to breathe up here. We live at around 6,600 ft, but there is a huge difference between 6,600 ft and 11 or 12,000 ft. There were many short steep hills that just sucked the energy out of ya and left you gasping for air! And after every short steep hill, you transferred to long gradual hills, so there wasn't really much opportunity to recover. But man, the views were incredible! From where we were you could see 60-70 miles in any direction and the colors are absolutely incredible!

From the Top of the World we then had some rolling singletrack and a bit more uphill. The rest of the ride was pretty much rolling, some climbing, some amazing downhills, and lots more beautiful scenery. After we were done climbing, we had a short steep and technical downhill for a bit, out into a beautiful meadow. By this time we were in the backbowls of VAIL.

We had a nice long downhill to navigate through one of the back bowls. James and I were bombing down it, at one point I went through a little dip and thought I had broken my fork. Kinda took me by suprise. Came up on two other bikers, and the guy wouldn't let me pass even after I asked him, so I just went off trail and went around him. We were doing about 20-25 all the way down this 3-4 mile downhill. Just really feeling it and getting in the groove... becoming one with our bikes.... What an amazing feeling until... I must have cased my back tire on a rock cause about a 1/2 mile from the bottom I flatted. I took about 4-5 minutes to change the tire while James went on to the planned stop at ORIENT Express Chairlift (pg 2 of that map). I changed my tire and waited about another 5 minutes for Jeff, the other guy with us. After I had waited so long and he still wasn't coming I knew that something had probably happened. The SLOW guys that I had passed finally came by and told me that my buddy had cracked his frame in half. I thought OH NO! We were about 6-7 miles from any kind of town, so a long hike carrying a broken bike. I went back to check on him and here is what I found....

After helping him load what was left of his "bike" I took off to find James. He had been concerned because at this point it had been about 25 minutes that he had been waiting. After informing him that Jeff was ok, we went to the meeting point to wait for him and take some pics of him hiking while carrying his bike. I know it wasn't funny at the moment, but it was kind of comical looking back on it.
While wondering what we were going to do about this SNAFU, we saw a white VAIL resorts truck go by (a worker getting the lifts ready for operation). Somebody suggested that someone should chase him down, and me being the eager beaver and ready to do some good, I hop on my trusty steed and start bombing down this dirt road at about 30 mph (EMERGENCY HERE PEOPLE!) I caught up with the truck and explained to him the situation and he said sure he would help. He gave me a ride back up to where I had come from and gave Jeff a ride to the ski aid station where someone else gave him a ride back to Vail Village where we would pick him up in a bit. Meanwhile we still had about 5 miles of SWEET and TECHNICAL!!!! downhill to hit on the way to Minturn. This section of downhill was the most TECHNICAL I have ever been on. Lots of large rocks to navigate, (and a beaver dam to cross...) This whole downhill section took us a while and was very challenging, prompting James at one point to "jump" over the handlebars and land on his back to stare at the cloudy sky above. On the left side of the trail was a straight drop to the stream below, and on the right beautiful colors of the Aspens. Several times I tried to sneak a peak to the stream below and almost ran my bike off the cliff straight into the stream (FOCUS NICK!)

James and I made it down in fine shape. It started snowing close to the bottom, we picked up Jeff's truck in Minturn, drove up to Vail to pick up Jeff, then drove up to the top of Vail Pass to get James's truck. Then headed home to a nice warm house where Natalie had informed me that all the work was done and all I had to do was come home and drink a beer with her and the dogs. What a Perfect Day!


I would highly recommend this ride, and will be for sure to take any visitors on it that come out to ride. Although since it is in the high country (all above 10,000 ft) it is only open for about 4-5 months of the year. I would say that now (fall) is by far the best time to do it. It was an awesome and gorgeous ride! An EPIC ride for sure!