Day 10: The Long and Windy Road
An interesting day. The only way to approach long days like this (and the way I approach any long bike ride) is to break it up into segments mentally. Someone once told me that all bike rides are the same in that they have a beginning, a middle, and an end. On Pac Tour, I make a real effort not to tell myself "I'm going to ride 147 miles today." Instead, I think, "I'm going to ride to the first rest stop." Today's ride divided itself into two completely different halves.
Stu Pearson's friends asked me to take a picture of him so
they could see how he's doing.
We left Alamosa just as the sun came up, right into our eyes and the eyes of the drivers overtaking us on Route 160. It was cold enough that people wore long-fingered gloves. I was riding with Susan Notorangelo and Pat Carter. With the wind at our backs, we made excellent progress getting out of the San Luis Valley, heading toward La Veta Pass, about 40 miles to the east.
After an hour or so, we were cruising along on a wide shoulder with a couple of other Pac Tour riders, when I heard the unmistakable bleep bleep of a police siren being turned on and off. Sure enough, a sheriff's car pulled us over because we were riding two abreast (although to the right of the white line).
We all stopped and Susan quickly said, "Pat! Deal with it."
Pat Carter went to talk to the officer. I was a bit ahead, so I couldn't hear exactly what transpired. Apparently, Pat said "Good morning." According to Susan, Pat has a way of saying "Good morning" that immediately identifies her as a retired NYC police detective. A few more words were exchanged. Pat's NYPD badge was flashed. The sheriff experienced an attitude adjustment worthy of Paul on the road to Damascus. Susan promised that we would ride single file. She then suggested that the sheriff might want to repeat his warning to all of the faster riders who were now ahead of us. "Hold them up for at least five minutes," she said.
From this point, we did a pace line with two-minute pulls each at the front. Chuck Bramwell was part of our group at this point. Gradually, we started gaining altitude as we approached La Veta Pass.
The rest stop at the summit of La Veta pass.
Chuck Bramwell was kind of enough to take this picture of
me just before the summit.
This pass was very different from Wolf Creek. For one thing, it's about 1,000 feet lower at 9,000-something feet. A few more feet and Jamieson's friend Craig would have had to stay with us for a second day. The scenery, while still beautiful, was not quite as spectacular as that at Wolf Creek. On the plus side, the climb was more gradual.
Looking back
from whence we came.
The downhill from the summit was also less scenic than the previous day's descent, but we all thought it was more fun. We flew down for at least 10 miles, getting up to just over 40 mph on the steepest parts. After that, it was mostly downhill with a tailwind all the way to lunch, which was in a nice city park in Walsenburg. We were now in completely different country -- brown and barren compared to the lush mountain scenery we had just left.
Susan's plan was to ride to the first rest stop after lunch, which would be just over 100 miles. She suggested several times that I might want to ride ahead, but I figured that having made such good time in the morning, I wouldn't have too much trouble getting to the hotel by a reasonable hour. We hooked up with about five guys who were pacelining out of lunch, and they pulled us almost all the way to the rest stop. Susan took a long pull at the end of that segment because she knew she was stopping at that point.
That's where the ride changed completely.
What changed was the wind. Pat took one look at it and decided that she, too, was done riding for the day. So I left the second-to-last rest stop alone and quickly discovered that I was heading directly into a stiff head wind. Even though the route was downhill (gradually), I had to work hard to maintain a speed of around 15 to 17 mph. And I had 40 miles to go to La Junta. Well, these are the times on PAC Tour where you just bear down and get the miles done -- assuming that your goal is to ride the whole thing, which I think is the case for most people. I discovered that there are 19 telephone poles per mile on this stretch of Route 10. We had one rest stop in the middle of this long, boring stretch, and Woody Graham left from there just a few seconds after I did. Gradually he caught up to me, and I jumped on his rear wheel like a coward sneaking into a lifeboat. After a while, we started trading pulls at the front, and we ended up riding into La Junta together. The last 10 miles brought us out of the desolate landscape you see at the top of this page and into agricultural land -- our first corn fields and at least one pumpkin patch.
I got to the Holiday Inn just a little after 5 o'clock, hours after some, but still quite a bit ahead of others. Everyone thought the wind was tough, but the real question is: What will it be like tomorrow, when we do the longest day of the tour? Tune in tomorrow.
Woody Graham and his Trek 1420, which is almost identical
to my Dad's. Woody's from South Carolina, so he's riding home.
An end of the day ritual for Lon: fixing bikes.