June 19, rest day in Crested Butte
As of today, we’ve covered 281 of our 435 total miles, and Carol and I have spent approximately 19.5 hours in the saddle. So we’re averaging around 14.4 mph, which, I think, is pretty darn good.
You may be curious, what does one think about during all those hours? Here are some of the deep thoughts that have been going through my head:
- Why does my nose constantly run while I’m biking? Even when it’s hot?
- I wonder how many pedal revolutions I’ve gone through so far?
- Does having a constantly runny nose contribute to dehydration?
- What is that burning sensation?
- Okay, let’s say I’m averaging 60 rpm (though it’s probably more like 70-75), times 60 minutes in an hour, carry the two … wait, where was I?
- Why does my nose constantly run while I’m biking?
And so on. Believe me, no major world problems are being solved. And that, frankly, is quite lovely.
What was truly lovely was collapsing in our condo last night. It’s a wonderful little place with a decent bed, a kitchen, and a shower that about knocks you off your feet. Heavenly. We did a little saddle-sore triage (thanks to a large tube of A&D Ointment), and were asleep before it was even dark outside.
And this morning: NO ALARM! First of many wonderful things. Peace and quiet. Coffee and hanging out; catching up on journaling; washing out cycling clothes (including gloves and helmet straps, which are absolutely encrusted in salt), reorganizing the duffel bag. For some reason we’re still carrying around what feels like a 10-pound bag of gummy worms, now all thoroughly squished together. You don’t even want to know what the Pig Newtons look like.
After we were collected, we went for a little walkabout in Mount Crested Butte. Nothing spectacular; just lots and lots of fancy condos clustered around the ski lifts. This is a tiny little ski resort, though, and it reminds me of what Snowmass looked like 30 years ago. But you don’t come here to admire the buildings; it would be pretty hard to compete with the scenery.
One of the RTR “goodies” for this rest day is a free ticket to ride the chair lift, so Carol and I quite happily indulge. The day is perfect in every way: cool air, warm sun, no wind; a few puffy clouds, and a surrounding amphitheater of high mountain peaks. Beautiful, beautiful place, and one I hope to come back to.
There were a steady stream of RTR’ers on the chair lift, which is cleverly equipped to haul bikes up the ski slope too. A lot of people had taken the opportunity to rent mountain bikes and try out some of the runs down the slope; we, personally, just couldn’t see putting our butts in a saddle again quite so soon! We even saw a couple of adaptive mountain bikes — totally cool.
As for us, we hopped off the chair lift and wandered for a bit through the forest in the sweet high mountain air. We didn’t linger too long, though, as we had massages scheduled back down at the high school. After a short walk we rode the chair lift down, grabbed a bite of lunch, and caught a shuttle bus down to town.
(Just an aside: getting a massage when you’re screaming sore all over isn’t really a very pleasant experience. There’s a cadre of massage therapists who follow RTR from town to town, and there’s an assembly line of people moving through the massage “machine” every day. It helps so much to get some of the gunk wrung out of your muscles, especially after yesterday’s marathon 92-miler. But my quads were so tender I could barely stand to have them touched! I about went through the roof. Then the therapist climbed up on the table and “walked” down my back on her knees. OMG. Ow.)
We spent the rest of our glorious rest day doing some grocery shopping, wandering around the town (a very neat little place), and then fixing a delicious lasagna and salad dinner for ourselves back at the condo. Tomorrow is a big, big day: Cottonwood Pass, at over 12,000 feet, fourteen miles of climbing on a dirt road, no less. The rumor was flying all over today: that the pass still wasn’t navigable (it was only finally opened to traffic six days ago due to deep overhanging snow drifts) and we’d be re-routed over Monarch Pass, which would put us at around 105 miles for the day. But these guys who run RTR really know what they’re doing, and I have no doubt that tomorrow morning we’ll be heading up that dirt road.
