Saturday, August 11, 2007

Wow! What A Ride!

Wow! What a ride!

That could be said about life because it truly is an awesome ride that we get to spend on this planet. God is so good!

It can also be said about the ride I took today on my mountain bike with some co-workers. We traveled to a much heralded location (a couple hours from home) to take an epic mountain bike ride (31 miles) and enjoy some of the magnificent scenery that we are blessed with here in Colorado.

The ride is the Continental Divide Trail from the Summit of Monarch Pass, it is also called the Monarch Crest ride. The average elevation of the trail is right around 11,900 feet above sea level; some places it gets higher and some places it goes lower but it is pretty high in elevation for riding a bike.
It was beautiful and spectacular, and a great time. This is NOT a trip for the faint of heart, nor for those without above average bike handling skills. Riding across high Rocky Mountain terrain - which includes slopes, rocks, roots, streams, mud puddles, and more... not to leave out some incredibly steep uphills and downhills - on a mountain bike requires some decent fitness and a heart for adventure.

We had a few mishaps, though none serious. I took a tumble early on and bent my front rim, which made for a tough start, but with some work got it ridable. A couple others in our group got flat tires, which were quickly repaired and we continued on. One had some problems with his dérailleur, but not enough to keep him from going on.

If I can get some pictures from the event, I'll post them in another post.

Blessings to all.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

here's a link to a fellow cycle guy

http://pareding.blogspot.com/

i can't imagine going more than two feet on a mountain bike ;)

Chris Krycho said...

I'm looking forward to getting to hear you actually talk about it. :-) I was praying that it'd go both enjoyably and safely... I'm glad it did. How long did it take you guys to do the ride?

Blessed son of the King said...

Ame, Thanks for sharing the link. I've only had a chance to quickly glance at it, but I'll be revisiting it soon.
One never knows how far one can go until trying. ;)

Chris, The ride took us about five hours from the time we started until the time we finished...
But there was about two hours of time that accumulated that we were resting, or waiting for somebody to catch up, or attempting to fix mechanical problems with one bike or another. So actual riding time was just a little over three hours.
Wish you could have been there. ;)