Almost

It was 8:15 pm when I arrived at the mouth of Glenwood Canyon. I began my ride at 4:15 am that morning. Now, 167 miles and over 12,000 feet of climbing later, I hit the point of the ride where the Colorado River had flooded the trail and required me to hitch a ride with my support vehicle. In my pre-ride planning I established a cutoff time of 7pm by which I had to be in Glenwood Springs. I was an hour and fifteen minutes behind. The late summer sun would set in 15 minutes and I would need to travel 42 more miles up-valley for around 2100 feet of steady elevation gain in the dark to reach Aspen. I assessed my situation.

The first 5 1/2 hours of my ride felt good and strong. As expected, getting over Loveland Pass was the crux. I had done this only once and had begun only 6.2 miles below the start of the pass. This time, I had traveled over 60 miles and climbed at least 7,000 feet to get to that point making it the longest and hardest ride of my life to that point, and I felt every inch of it. But I reached the top 30 minutes ahead of my cutoff time, which meant I was on pace to arrive in Aspen before a late bedtime for the girls at the end of my ride. The next 30 minutes of downhill provided needed relief but kept my attention and required my vigilance. The ten hours after that were definitely what I set out for: a hard and unpredictable struggle that tested me in many ways. There was beauty going around Lake Dillon up to Copper and through Vail and Avon, and I kept myself positive by reminding myself to enjoy the ride and take in the beauty. The clouds had kept me cool until then and the sun kept me warmer as I peaked on the pass. Flying down the pass was so much fun. I felt like a bike racer. Watching the sun glimmer on Lake Dillon and seeing the soft green hillsides traversed by the shadows of fluffy white clouds made my feel lucky to live in the place where my dad brought us when I was not even a year old. In Dillon, a helpful ranger saw me about to take Dillon Dam Road and pointed out that there was a really nice bike path that went to the same place. I got to ride through trees and brush and look at the valley ahead, taking in the beauty. I also started seeing little "Go Dan Go" chalk drawings in places along the trail, courtesy of my sister in law, Carly and my nephews, which lifted my spirits.

This helped push the fatigue out of my mind and focus on continuing to move to the far side of Frisco where I would catch a trail to Copper and then the trail over Vail Pass. But, I was in new territory and did not know the exact route from here to Glenwood. Even coming down from Loveland Pass there was some stress as I could not easily locate bike path so I rode mostly on the main road through Dillon, which had a decent shoulder but was hot and full of cars. After Dillon and for the rest of my ride, with the exception of Vail Pass and some other spots with well established paths, the route was intermittently hopping from path to road and there were detours and road construction along the way. I ended up on more roads than expected and had to double back a couple times. I had reached the top of Vail Pass just five minutes after my 2pm cutoff time, but knew there was a lot of downhill ahead so I hoped to make up the time. I missed a turn in Vail and spent more time on road than path, and crossed some trail maintenance projects that slowed me down a bit. I also took a needed rest break in West Vail. I was still off pace but had some hope coming into Edwards that I could pick it up. 

I came upon some road work there before meeting Sarah at a stop. The site had cones and there was a truck backing up slowly ahead of me. The signal lady to my left pointed to the truck, which I thought was an indicator to go around it to the right. But she was probably just trying to alert me to the fact it was moving and when I went through she yelled, "hey!" I was always at least six feet away from the truck and it was moving about 5mph and the driver saw me, so there was no real danger. But I said to myself, "you are tired, pay close attention to the signal person at construction sites." Shortly after this I met my wife for our last pit stop, in Edwards. I asked her to pinch the tires and she said they felt firm. I fueled up on food and had a few swigs of coffee. It was 6:10 pm. I was still off pace. I had been battling a hot steady headwind since Avon and the sun was feeling more intense. Where I had hoped to cruise flat stretches at 17mph or better I was having to get down on my drop bars in an aerodynamic position and crank away at the pedals just to keep moving at about 12mph. Over time this was adding up and it was making me burn up my reserves.

In Edwards I had 33 miles to go before I hit the spot where I would have to hitch a ride through Glenwood Canyon due to flooding on the path. My mind did the fuzzy math on how I could somehow still make Glenwood near my 7pm cutoff. I ignored the light headache I had been feeling for hours and tried to prepare myself to press through the hot wind. I made a plan change to skip my next scheduled stop at Eagle and meet Sarah further down the road in Gypsum. I rode away from her in Edwards and soon came to another construction zone. The signal man there did not speak English but he noticed that I had gone through and doubled back and was looking for the trail. He gestured and his crew waived me toward them, through cones and debris to the path hidden behind them. I rode on after that racing against the clock and hoping that the sunset would cool me off and the headwinds would turn to tailwinds in Glenwood and suck me up the valley. I just had to get there. But, about 130 miles into this ride, things started going awry.

First, I came to a dead end in the trail and had to dismount to get back to the road. When I did, the bottom of my left shoe came off. Yes, the shoe goo held for a while, but the vintage shoes finally gave out. That was okay, I had a spare pair in the car and I had taken my headphones with me to call Sarah if I needed her. She was on I-70 when I called and told her. She said she would find an exit and turn around and asked me to drop a pin with my exact location. I said okay, then another call came through from and unknown number. Normally I would have ignored this, but a few minutes earlier, the shoe incident, an unknown number had called twice in a row and in an attempt to silence the call on my headphones I accidentally answered it and it was my brother, Marc, who asked if I was trying to call him. I assured him I was fine and let him hang up. I later learned that I had hit a button that calls the last number I dialed, so I had just missed the unknown call and then had called Marc. But I didn't realize that at the time, so it left me with a sense that for some reason his phone was coming through as an unknown caller. This is important background for what happened next.

As I searched for my shoe plate and worked on dropping a pin for Sarah the unknown number called again. I answered hoping for some news from Marc that he was helping Sarah find me on the road. But it wasn't Marc.

"Hello?" I answered.

"Yes sir, this is officer Mark Brown from the Caslte Rock Police Department calling about a failure to appear," the voice on the other end said with authority, and I was sucked out of my ride into a new dimension of confusion.

"Excuse me, what?" I said, dumbfounded. He repeated himself. It was windy and hard to hear him, but I told him I was in the middle of a bike ride and asked if he could call back. He told me to pull over somewhere safe so we could address this situation. 

I was unsure if this had to do with a client of mine or me. I asked again what it was for and he said he had a summons, signed by me, that had required me to appear in court yesterday and he now "had a failure to appear and contempt of court on file and needed to rectify this situation with me." I told him I never signed or received a summons and that this must be a mistake but that I would be happy to contact him tomorrow about it, explaining again I was in the middle of a ride and my wife was trying to find me to bring me some gear. He seemed unpersuaded and started talking about consequences but just then Sarah started texting and calling me and I could barely focus on what he was saying. I eventually joined the calls together so I would not hang up on the officer and tried to explain to a thoroughly confused Sarah what the hell was going on while the officer got more heated on the other end. He eventually said he was transferring me to his supervisor to figure this out. 

I explained my situation to the supervisor and asked again for some clarity in this, showing some distrust in the legitimacy of the call. He offered to send me a link to verify his identity and when I asked if we could talk tomorrow he said, "no we need to keep an open line of communication until this is done." Just in case you don't already know, that's a red flag and telltale element of a scam. With growing irritation I asked, "and if I have to hang up and call you back what happens," to which he replied, "a warrant will issue for your arrest and the deputy will locate you using GPS." Then it hit me. I felt stupid for not seeing this right out of the gate. This was a total scam. I said, "well I guess that's what will have to happen because this call is a fake and I'm hanging up." Of course, nobody came to arrest me. But this incident shook me and Sarah up a bit and cost us valuable time. I put my spare shoes on quickly, assured her I was not in any danger of being arrested and got back on the bike. She told me Marc was going to support me the rest of the way and I told her to have him meet me in Dotsero further down the road. I went off again in a fog trying to make up time pedaling into the hot wind. I stayed in my truck pedaling coming up only to check my watch. I was well behind pace now and was making slow progress.

When I saw Marc at Dotsero I dropped my finger ahead twice to signal him to go to the next checkpoint and I just kept riding. The next point was only about 5 miles away and it is where I would have to dismount and hitch a ride. When I got there he said the trail was closed ahead a little sooner than I had expected. He loaded the bike onto the car and I got in and chugged water, feeling very very weary. He had to backtrack to Dotsero to get on the highway to go through the canyon, and as he drove I started to think about what was ahead.

It was getting dark. I still had some power in my headlight but I did not know if I had three or even two hours left. The path to Basalt would require me to climb steadily uphill and did not always follow a road. The path after Basalt was unfamiliar to me, but I knew there were many braids and turnoffs that I was in no shape to negotiate successfully, especially in the dark. But I felt very torn about the idea of stopping. I called my wife and told her what I was feeling.

She reminded me to think of my "why?" 

I really wanted to finish this ride in Aspen because it would be a major accomplishment and would make a neat story. But I had done the ride as a tribute to my dad. Family was always his highest priority. I wanted to pull into Aspen while my girls were still awake and give them a memory of me after this ride. I wanted to share this with the people who had been watching my progress all day. I was trying to push past my desire to quit, and had been doing that successfully for about nine hours at that point. But now stopping the ride to see the girls did not feel like quitting. It felt like the right thing. I did not want to put myself or Marc in danger that night. I was well past my cutoff, which I had established during lucid pre-ride planning as a safety backstop. I wasn't going to make it to Aspen in a day along this new and extra long route. But I could still see my girls, so that's what I did.

I told Marc I was done and we went up to Aspen to be greeted by an awesome welcome party with cowbells and signs. I hugged and kissed my girls and my wife. This has been an extraordinary ride and an extraordinary day.

The next morning I woke up very early. I am still conditioned to wake up early for training. I felt remarkably okay. I went over to the bike. The back tire was entirely flat, rims in the ground. Later the next day I would find a shard of metal had pierced the tire and tube causing a slow leak. I have no idea when it happened but I think it was after my last stop in Edwards when I crossed the road construction. After that my focus had unraveled, I had stopped doing regular check ins and my pace was unusually slow for about the last two hours.

As I look back on it now, I see that this endeavor was even bigger than I realized. It would give me calamities right at the end when they had maximum impact and when I was fatigued. It made me realize that riding with a team to cut the wind in the valley could have made a huge difference. It let me see how hard it was for my dad to push that bike up hills, across valleys, and over passes to do his ride. I was happy I did the ride on his bike. I was happy that I used vintage gear, all the way down to the shoes that fell apart.

I'll try to ride to Aspen again on my modern Masi, but riding the 1975 model was special. As long as my memory stays in tact, I'll never forget this ride, and if my memory fails I hope with all my heart the memory of the ride, both mine and my dad's, lives on with my wife and kids and relatives through stories for years and generations to come.

The stories about heroes should never stop being told, so I'll continue to blog monthly.