Current accommodations, and laundry porn

It's really a sweet pop-up, which I'm sharing with Gretchen's dad. My queen size bed is just through the screens. My laundry is flying like a flag.

Oh, yeah: today's total mileage was 59.83, average speed was 13.8 (it was 16.6 before the climb up Vail Pass, which was roughly miles 45-52.) Maximum speed was a paltry 42, but there was a lot in the high 30s.

Still trying to decide if tomorrow will be 54 miles or 100. I wish there was an in-between option.

Courage Classic, Day 1

Had a good ride today, the first day of the Courage Classic. Vail Pass was a fucking gutbuster as expected, seven straight miles of basically continuous uphill, but it didn't rain as predicted, so that's something.

Staying vegan is making my food boring: oatmeal for breakfast, PB&J and potato chips for lunch, and more bananas than you can shake a banana at.

I took a few fun pictures, but all with my camera, not my phone, so nothing to post right now. I was hoping for a sign that said Vail Pass, but was spurned.

Only cried twice, and got choked up about a dozen other times. The volunteers are amazing, especially at welcoming riders into rest stops, and the reception is pretty moving.

I got a great high five from a six or seven year old girl sticking her hand out through the gates just before I rode through today's finish line, then watched as many others riders rode by her outstretched hand, oblivious or ignoring it. It made me sad, but she still seemed to be having a great time.

Poison right, antidote left

Fairly self explanatory, right?

And no, I didn't do this damage by myself.

Dear Denver, Part Two

It's a little strange to be writing public love letters to you, Denver, but J is aware of it, and it's fine. Really. I can maintain both relationships, I'm confident of it. Just don't ask me to choose, okay?

Alright, enough of that: it's too difficult to try to structure a blog post as a love letter. Denver is, however, lovely. Another warm clear day, Wynkoop beer on the way, and a long night ahead of paying to celebrate T leaving town.

The bicycle facilities are fantastic here, and not just in comparison to Atlanta. Bike lanes, sharrows, great signage. There are separate paths on the Cherry Creek Trail for cyclists and pedestrians, for crying out loud. And the cyclists respond by being everywhere, and the cars respond by being courteous and respectful. What a notion: bicycling begets bicycling!

Damn, I want to live in the west again. As much as Atlanta is treating us well, it's just not a love affair like the west is.

Dear Denver,

I missed you. I didn't miss the chronically late Amtrak, though Union Station left me alone for the hour or so I carefully put Sitba back together, and Amtrak personnel from Charleston, WV, to Chicago, to Denver managed to inflict no damage, even though they screwed up her rear fender in the short space from Springfield, MA, to Rochester, NY in May. But I digress, sweet Denver.

I arrived, and you welcomed me, in late July, with one of those perfect Denver summer days: warm, clear, dry.

I visited your REI flagship.

I marveled at the fantastic bicycling culture and infrastructure.

I'm drinking Bruery Cotton, half price, and thinking about wandering to Tattered Cover for a while, then your gorgeous City Park.

Denver, when can we make it work again?

Train

Why the hell am I blogging at such an early hour (4:25am MDT), you wish to know?

Because the fucking door in the picture, which is about eight feet from my seat, slams like a gunshot as often as every thirty seconds. I'm less than amused.

Overhead view

From my walk around Chicago today while on an Amtrak layover. I had an amazing lunch at a vegan restaurant, Karyn's on Green, and picked up some Dogfish 90 Minute for my continuing journey.

We're rolling through beautiful heartland. That is, if you can ignore the ginormous monocrop industrial corn and soybean fields, and the seven or so coal trains that have passed us going east, and the repulsive vegan burger I just had for dinner. Denver tomorrow!

Anthony Bourdain = idiot

I've said it a lot of times, but  this article by Dan Landes, owner of two vegetarian restaurants we love in Denver, Watercourse and City, O' City , says it very well and with more texture than I normally have.

Industrial America

Since that last screed about energy, my train passed by Lucas Oil Stadium (home of the Indianapolis Colts) and is now transitioning from Appalachian misery to Rust Belt decay.

Lucas Oil paid 121 million dollars for the naming rights to the stadium. Say what?

Misty taste of moonshine

John Denver sang that West Virginia was almost heaven. And indeed, it's a pretty special place. At least when the fucking coal companies aren't blowing the tops off of the mountains. Mountaintop Removal Mining, or MTR for short, is such a monstrosity, such an abomination, that it's difficult to describe rationally, or without hyperbole. Lives are being destroyed, rivers and creeks poisoned and entirely eliminated, human health sacrificed, cultures and families shattered. All so we can leave our lights on at an artificially cheap price, blast our air conditioners, keep our gigantic flat screen televisions blathering.

What is wrong with us?

Why do we possibly think it acceptable to butcher Appalachia this way, when we would never dream of doing it to New York City, or the Oregon coast?

How many BP oil disasters, Exxon Valdez disasters, Bhopal disasters do we need before we address our addiction to artificially cheap energy and corporate profit?

Biking in Charleston, WV

It was otherwise quite nice. But this is where the riverside bike path just, uhhh, ends. That's path at the bottom of the photo.

More boring clothes washing images

Looks for all the world like I'm washing my clothes in a toilet, doesn't it? I swear I'm not, even though living in a tent in a virtual rainforest in rural southern West Virginia does lower one's standards pretty significantly. I promise I'm going to shower, probably multiple times, before I see a couple of you next week.

And no, I don't expect for laundry porn to bump out food porn on my blog, but eating peanuts and potato chips in my tent doesn't make for particularly exciting blog photography.

Current accommodations

And it's wonderful. Much better than last night, before I rigged the tarp.

Yes, I'm a little crazy. Just a little.

Laundry

You know, if the hotels I stayed at had washers and dryer, maybe I wouldn't do this. Maybe.

My dearth of blogging lately is due, in part, to being busy touring through the extremely hot and humid states of Michigan, Ohio, and now West Virginia, and that typing on my phone is a big pain in the add without swipe.

Maybe more soon!

Charcoal delivery

The first of two runs of 46 pounds of charcoal, for a cookout for ~150. My plan is to deliver everything by bike before the rest of the volunteer crew arrives.

p.s. Hope we don't set anything on fire, 'cause that fire extinguisher isn't charged.

The one

This is the one biblical verse I know by heart. (banner at the wonderful conference I'm spending my birthday at, Resistance For a Nuclear Free Future.)

Pretty damn funny

I've never actually flagged something to Best of Craigslist before this ad:


Divorcing my almost NEW Giant XTC 2 - $750 (Cabbagetown). Seriously: go read this ad, and pay special attention to the pictures.

It's all the funnier to me since it's the same bike, and likely even the same model year, that I rode and sold to fund the purchase of Sitba.

I rode the crap out of that bike: used it as a year-round commuter in Anchorage, regularly left it locked up outside in snow and ice, hauled lumber and compost with it, rode it 26 miles on uncleared trails in -20 weather as training for the Frostfree Bottom that didn't happen.

All that said, though, at a nearly one for one exchange rate with the Canadian dollar, he's still asking more for the bike than I paid for it new. I have no idea what the hell is going on with the used bicycle market in Toronto, but from briefly perusing the other bike ads, I think this guy just really doesn't want a divorce. Maybe relationship therapy would be a good interim step.