June 17th-19th: Wild nights, New trail names, and bubbly guts

I left Salida on the 15th around 3pm after picking up my bike from the shop. They were able to fix the spoke and do a couple other minor things—I highly recommend Absolute Bikes if you need anything bike-related in Salida. They’re great people.

It was pretty hard leaving Sarah—as big of a mental boost as it is to see her and friends, it also makes getting back on the bike and pedaling away that much tougher. That, combined with the fact that Hitch, our 15.5 year old lab, isn’t doing super well, (I basically have to say goodbye to him every time I see him, just in case) made for a long afternoon.

The climb out of Salida was significantly harder I’d anticipated. My mental game was off, and my stomach was acting up again, so I just slowly grinded my way up and out of the valley. Thank god for the carbohydrate drink mix Sarah got for me—it’s a crazy drink mix that’s 320 calories and very easy on the stomach, and was the only thing I could “eat” all day.

The first part of the ride was gorgeous, at least. I climbed out of Salida and into this really cool, sage-filled valley. There were tons of antelope, including one buck who kept posing for pictures and running alongside me (the 2700 mile big game scouting trip continues).

I’d met up with Montana Mitch earlier that day in Salida, and we’d tentatively made plans to camp together in Hartsell that evening. I noticed a “cafe” on the map that allowed camping in the yard behind the building, and figured it might be a good place to crash. Mitch had headed that way earlier in the day, and my plan was to get there by 7:30 when they stopped taking dinner orders.

It ended up taking me 6 hours to ride 45 miles, and when I realized I wouldn’t make it in time for dinner I sent an inreach message to Sarah to see if she could get a message to Mitch to order me food. Priorities.

I kept pedaling, and the landscape changed from beautiful rolling hills to an eerie, almost post-apocalyptic scene. Suddenly, old, abandoned trailers and campers started to dot the landscape, most with trash and crap strewn about them, some looking like they had partially exploded… what was a pleasant ride quickly turned into a “head down, don’t stare” kind of situation.

I pedaled as hard as I could, trying to make Hartsell before dark, but the road surface became badly washboarded and seemed to just keep going. The sun had set, and I was losing light quickly.

Normally that’s not a big deal, but given the weird zone I was in and how I was already feeling, it just added more anxiety. I finally made it to pavement, and unfortunately had 10 miles to pedal on a shoulder-less highway in the dark to reach the cafe.

When I finally made it to the “cafe,” I saw that it was actually a “cafe/saloon,” and it was hopping inside. I met Mitch around back, where he was setting up his tent and had a cheeseburger waiting for me. It turns out the “campsite” was actually just a small patch of yard near the dumpsters behind the bar, with just enough room to pitch our tents.

Mitch explained that it was a pretty rowdy scene inside, but the bartender was nice and there was water/soda, etc. We went in and had a Sprite and a beer while I ate my meal, and watched from the back corner of the bar as 15 locals got progressively more shitfaced over the course of an hour. It was a Sunday night, and by the time we walked out back to our tents, they were nearly falling off barstools and belting Journey at the top of their lungs, which was a lot for a couple of guys who’d ridden their bikes all day and just wanted to go to bed.

I set up my tent by headlamp, and by the headlights and heckling of said locals as they got in their cars to head home. Apparently a crew of them came back around 2am and started up the remaining cars to go somewhere else, but luckily I slept through that.

The cafe opened at 6am, so the next morning we grabbed breakfast and rolled out. Mitch and I had been sort of passing each other on and off throughout the whole trip, but hadn’t ridden together yet. Turns out we’re on about the same pace, so it was awesome to ride with him and bullshit throughout the day. My new trail name, given by Mitch, is “Lemonade.” I have a tendency to talk about lemonade nonstop, and drink 4 or 5 lemonades when I get to a restaurant. He’s “Sprite.” Turns out both of us crave those drinks out here—must be a bikepacker thing. We’re now on a quest to find handcrafted, artisanal lemonade at every stop (no luck so far).

We rode through Como and up over Boreas Pass, which turned out to be the exact valley Sarah and I spent a Thanksgiving in an off-grid cabin 5 years ago. It turned out to be a pretty gentle grade the whole way, and an awesome ride overall.

We then descended down into Breckenridge. Riding through Breck and Summit County felt like a completely different planet than what we’d experienced the night before—we stopped for Gelato in Breck (lemon flavored, of course), and rode on the incredible bike path system through Frisco, Dillon and finally Silverthorne.

At one point, we waded into Dillon Reservoir to soak our legs in the cold water. We were just standing there looking at the incredible view, and burst out laughing at the thought of sleeping next to a dumpster behind the bar in Hartsell just hours prior. The variety you can get in one day on the GDMBR never ceases to amaze.

We grabbed rooms at a cool hostel/hotel called The Pad in Silverthorne (a recommendation from a guy we bumped into on the bike path who’d raced the Tour Divide a few years ago), and then headed to dinner.

Mitch was craving a steak and found a spot nearby that turned out to be a beautiful mistake. We walked in and got a table before realizing it was one of those “grill your own steak” places—which is not the first thing you want to do after riding 70 miles—but the food was great and it made for a good story.

We also got to grab a beer with Sally and David, my friends from Pie Town whose ride was cut short by Sally’s broken collar bone. They were in town visiting family and had seen our dots, so we met up and swapped stories from when I last saw them, which was helping load their gear into a truck so Sally could get to the hospital.

Mitch and I got a leisurely start yesterday morning and rolled out around 9:30 after breakfast in Silverthorne. We were aiming to get to Radium last night, but unfortunately my stomach issues took a turn and I was barely able to make it 50 miles to Kremmling, where I’m now hunkered down in a hotel and taking another zero day to hopefully let things sort themselves out.

The real bummer is that Mitch (who is awesome, by the way… he’s a firefighter from Bozeman who also drives a Tundra, and just an all around great guy) and I only got a day and a half of riding together—we were the first people each of us had met that were on a similar pace, and had planned to keep riding north together. He pushed out this morning for Steamboat, but who knows, maybe we’ll meet up again in a few days. The Divide seems to look at your plans and itinerary, consider them for a moment, and then light them on fire and throw them in a dumpster behind a bar in Hartsell.