Hi everyone:

Here's the story (with pictures) of my trip to the 2002 Annual Wheelmen meet in Colorado. Those of you who know me know I get bored really fast looking at pictures, so I've picked the one picture from each day that I think is the best--either the best as a picture, or that has a good story behind it. And then I picked the first runner up too. On one or two days I've picked pictures that would appeal to just one person (who I've named). Clicking on the thumbnail will bring up the entire picture in a new window. The approximate picture size is given, in case you're on a slow connection.

I started the trip Wednesday morning, July 17, 2002.

Wednesday, July 17, 2002.

I made it to Austin, NV, about 300 miles from home for my first planned stop. The VW Golf tends to smoke a bit going up the hills, but there were so few cars about that it didn't really seem to matter. Once you get past Carson City, you see a few cars coming from the other direction, but almost no one going your way.

No real adventures to report for day 1, aside from all the rain I got after I crossed into Nevada. Glad I brought some plastic to cover up the leather saddle, because at times it was really pouring.

Grimes Point has the best preserved Indian Petroglyphs in Nevada. Most of them are hard to see, but this was was pretty clear. You'll also notice in the full picture, between the horizon and the top of the rock, a road....that's highway 50. See all the traffic? Neither do I.

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In Austin NV, (where I stopped for the day), the motel provided a walking guide to the town. The guide told of a guy who got rich off of silver mining had a castle made in the middle of nowhere. It's supposed to be an exact copy of one outside Rome. Since it was just about a 10 minute walk away, I went.

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Thursday, July 18, 2002

Did I say there wasn't much in Nevada? There's REALLY nothing for the first 80 miles in Utah.

After 40 miles of absolutely nothing, I came across one of those "No services for the next 43 miles" signs. I guess your options were to risk going 43 miles and not make it, or turn back and only have to go 40 miles for the nearest service. Sorry it's out of focus; the camera fixed in on the car antenna. (I just stopped in the middle of highway 50 and angled the car so I could take the picture out of the driver side window. There was no one else within sight.)

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It's so empty out here that there are no structures within sight of 50, and indeed, all the roads that intersect with it are gravel roads. No on or off-ramps. Just straight dirt. Again, look at all the traffic.

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Shortly after I passed the 'no service' sign, I noticed the straps holding the bike on the car roof were getting a bit loose. It turns out the inner tube has a slow leak...I figured it'd happen in the middle of nowhere, and I was pretty much as close to nowhere as anyone can be. I'm going to see if I can patch it; but if not, I have a brand new tube in reserve.

So at the end of the day I'm in Delta, UT. Tomorrow I'll take a detour to the Big Rock Candy Mountain. I think I may shoot for Green River, UT (near 191) instead of Grand Junction, CO tomorrow, since I'm getting really tired of driving.

Friday, July 19, 2002

Today I took a detour down to the Big Rock Candy Mountain...the mountains in that area are pretty--various shades of red, with some white tossed in. I was wondering which one in particular was the Big Rock Candy Mountain, when I rounded a bend and there, in front of me, was a bright yellow (well, bright yellow for rocks, anyway) mountain. I have to give it to Utah: they have some darned pretty rocks. This picture is mainly for Laura, of the real Big Rock Candy Mountain, but I'm sure everyone would like a look:

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All in all, the mountains in Utah are pretty neat. Unlike what we have in California where there's trees all over them, the mountains here are mostly bare rocks and you can see the strata. One or two had coloring and the shape that brought to mind the Titantic (before it sunk, that is). There was another, just across the gorge, that looks like the Olympic. But I'm limiting myself to just two pictures a day.

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The bike broke spoke #3 sometime today (two broke before I started the trip), and I wasn't even riding it today. I'm glad I brought 10 spares; I thought 10 might have been overkill but now I'm wondering if it'll be enough.

Anyway, I've stopped for the day in Green River, UT. Tomorrow my revised plan is to go to Grand Junction, then head south of Denver on 50, stopping most likely in Salida (near 285) or maybe Canon City (about 40 miles outside Pueblo). (Note to family: I dropped the visit to Placerville because, looking at the detail map, I see there's no easy loop to take to get there and then around to Denver.)

Then Sunday it's up on 25 to Denver, arriving close to 2 pm, but who knows?! I'll call Paul if I'm going to be off by more than, say, 90 minutes either way.

Saturday, July 20, 2002

Saturday was 'drive too much' day; I didn't mean it to be, but that's what happened. (Seven hours instead of six. I'm tired!)

Right after arriving in Colorado, you'll come across a big Visitor Center. The folks there are friendly and helpful, and they have brochures about everything anyone would ever want to see in Colorado.

However, I've noticed a lack of, at least along highway 50, historical markers in Colorado. I don't know why, as Utah and Nevada both had tons of them. (Nevada cheated a lot, as they would have "on this spot 15,000 years ago the Indians ....") Most of my good photos came from either historical markers or rest stop areas....say, I didn't notice a lot of rest areas here either. There were some, but instead of notices saying "Rest Area 1 mile", the signs were "Rest Area next left" when I was in the right hand lane, or "Rest Area on right" when I was in the left hand lane. So I missed nearly every rest stop. On the other hand, Colorado is where I first started seeing bicycle riders in big numbers, and bicycles on roof racks in even greater numbers.

You know the all-weather running tracks that are reddish? Well, this section of the road was about that color. There were cars about, so I couldn't stop to see what the heck it was made of. I also had to trust to luck that the picture would actually be of the road, since I just held the camera one-handed and clicked the shutter. All that, just because I'd never seen a red road before. (Obviously, I need to get out more!)

(56k)

I pulled over many a time today to let cars pass. I've found that the Golf will go up the steepest hills just fine...if you put it in 3rd gear and don't go faster than 35 - 40 mph. Any faster than that and the provided-free-of-charge James Bond smoke screen device kicks in. (It works really well, by the way.) The Golf made it up Monarch pass at 11,312 feet, and I took the required Continential Divide pictures.

This is for all the nay-sayers who claimed that the Golf wouldn't be able to make it to Colorado. You may now start saying that it won't make it back to California. By the way, the plastic on the highwheel's saddle is an AOL advertising plastic bag that was wrapped around the Sacramento Bee the day before I left. I almost didn't bring plastic because who (in California, anyway) ever heard of it raining in July...but I remembered that Pureheart said it'd sometimes rain up at Tahoe. That plastic has been on the saddle since Wednesday.

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I stopped for the day in Canon City, because the Colorado Visitor Center said it has a few items of interest. Unfortunately, I got here too late to see the Dinosaur Depot ("the greatest Jurassic dinosaur graveyard, perhaps in the world") and/or the Colorado Territorial Prison Museum and Park ("Stop: do time with us" is their motto). As a result, items I had hoped would go into today's pictures may have to wait until tomorrow--provided one or the other of these are open on Sunday.

Tomorrow (after either going to prison or to the dinosaurs) my plan is to head east on 50, then turn up on 115 to join 25, and then right into Denver. Then I'll be at Paul's house for a week in the evenings, and in Golden during the days for the Wheelmen meet. I'm glad I'm almost done with this driving for a while.

Sunday, July 21, 2002:

I did visit the prison museum in Canon City, CO, but anything relating to prisons is kinda weird. I mean, you can see all the contraband weapons prisoners made or smuggled in--but when you think about what they planned on doing with them, you just feel strange. So I won't say anything more about it.

I then had a short (3-hour) drive to Denver, and arrived at Paul's house at 12:30, more or less. From then on, things got busy. We packed up items needed for the Wheelmen meet, and then took off to get the early registrations underway. I pretended to help. Lowell, a college buddy of Paul is here from LA, and has been doing tons of artwork for the meet. (Lowell reminds me of Pureheart, for those of you who know Pureheart.) Paul asked Lowell for a few signs to direct people to the registration room, and Lowell got started right away. Here we see him on the floor (I think the table he was at got crowed with registration supplies) working on Willie Wheel, pointing the way to the registration room.

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For those of you who think old bikes are boring, maybe you'd prefer to see two of Paul and Barbara's cats. They're really big (kids: not big like Moo [everyone else: Moo is one of our cats]).

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We stayed at the registration until late, had an even later dinner, and I snuck off to bed when no one was looking.

Monday, July 22, 2002:

Monday started bright an early with an acclimatization ride. Most people went on the 12.5 mile version; about 6 (including me) went on the 25 mile version. I got to visit with people from all over (some from England, who, surprisingly, say drivers here are so polite....and they were serious) and in all ages. It was tough deciding which photo of Wheelmen to use, but after thinking it over and getting Lowell's and Paul's opinion, I decided on this one of one of the younger riders (Paul believes this may be Ariel Muller, but that's not confirmed) on a child's safety bicycle.

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Part of the acclimatization ride went past the Colorado Train Museum. I'm including the engine since some of you seem to like trains a bunch, but was really caught my eye was the Coors Beer car. I just hope someone doesn't start to collect advertising train cars (and you know who you are)...

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I finished the ride just in time to get a lunch before the dining commons closed. The rest of the day was filled with visiting the USGS earthquake center, hanging out with newly-arrived Wheelmen until Paul arrived with the key to the registration room, helping out with registrations, sneaking off to dinner with Lowell, and again registering folks until closing.

Tomorrow there'll be another acclimatization ride, and then some free time. I hope to get to one of the museums (there's a 50-mile ride option that'll go there, but I don't want to ride that much...25 miles was enough today!) tomorrow, as well as a few other places. Then the meet starts in earnest on Wednesday with the century ride (which I'll only do 50 miles...I may be crazy, but not THAT crazy).

Tuesday, July 23, 2002:

Tuesday is the last "pre-meet" day, as tomorrow is the official start of the Wheelmen 2002 meet. Most of the day will be taken up with riding; during my normal writing/picture time they're holding a viewing of the items up for auction and then there's a tour of one of the local's bike collection (and it's really extensive--he even has sub-collections of some rare bikes).

At any antique bicycle meet, there's bound to be some rare models. Here's one of the rarest that's appeared at the meet so far...it's what's known as a Highwheel Safety. 'Highwheel' because one wheel is big, and 'safety' because the design was modified in some way to make it harder for the rider to be thrown forward off the bicycle. This is a Gormully and Jeffery (that's the maker's name) American Light Champion Safety (the model name). It works by putting the rider farther back from the front wheel's center. Then, to make the big wheel smaller (so you wouldn't fall as far if you did fall forward), the pedals are on arms connected to the cranks. It wasn't all that easy to ride (lots of friction and wiggle-room with all those parts) and didn't sell well; thus, few are around today.

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Because I almost missed lunch yesterday, and if I went on the long ride to the museum I know I'd miss it for sure, I went on the short acclimatization ride. Then I made it to lunch in plenty of time, and had lots of time to walk the campus and town to see the sights.

Back in the 1970s, the UCDavis had a sculpture out on Russell Blvd that looked like a big water works assembly. Indeed, until the day they took "Bum Bum You've Been Here Before" down -- because the space was intended as a temporary long-term display area -- I thought it *was* some waterworks assembly. (Davis' big bicycle sculpture is in the spot now). Anyway, all that was just to say that as I walked around the Colorado School of Mines, I came across a weird bit of sculpture. Not as disguised as Bum Bum, but still odd looking. Here it is:

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Wednesday, July 24, 2002

For a century ride (for you non-cyclists, that means a 100-mile ride), you need to get started as early as possible so you have as much daylight as possible, and with any luck you'll finish before sundown. So the ride started at sunrise, about 5:30 here. This picture was taken at 6:06 am, give or take a few minutes. (If you have a program to get the actual time of the picture, please note that the camera's clock is off by two hours: one for daylight savings, and another for the difference between Pacific and Mountain time.)

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During the century ride, the places to lean your highwheel get hard to find as everyone else grabbed the good spots. What do you do when you get off a highwheel and there's no handy tree or fence nearby to lean it against, and you don't want to put it on the ground? This is what you do.

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Thursday, July 25, 2002:

Today was seminar day, so folks could recover from their long ride yesterday. I didn't take any pictures of the seminars, but I did take pictures of the bike displays.

The Pony Star bicycle is one of the cutest highwheel safetys out there. The big wheel is pretty darn small for a highwheel. This bike uses levers instead of pedals; a strap attached to the levers and wound around the rear hub moves the bike forward when the levers are pushed down. By the time this bike was made, the regular-looking bike as we now know when was pretty well established. (The company that made soon started making modern two-equal-sized-wheel bikes, but they kept that lever motion.) At one time I really wanted a Star bicycle, but then I had the chance to ride one, and that cured me. (Some people who ride Stars say you just have to get used to the differences in how the bike works; once you get the hang of it, a Star is supposed to be really nice.)

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Also on display: Piano music was one way folks entertained themselves, what with no TV or radios. And since bicycles were popular, they worked themselves into popular music. I thought this was a funny title for a song, and the publishers even had a photo to illustrate the title.

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Friday, July 26, 2002:

Friday was the highwheel games followed by the general meeting and a lamp ride, so we didn't get home 'til late. Many of the games are similar to the ones we do in Davis for Cyclebration. One difference is the slow race; they mark off a box about 4 feet by 10 feet (I didn't get the exact measurements), and you have to ride as slowly as you can--without stopping or going backwards--while not going outside the box. Your wheel has to cross the front line and exit through the back. The good thing about doing it this way is that they have at least 4 spotters nearby to catch you if you lose your balance; unlike in Davis, where you are left to fall as best you can. In all modesty, I placed 3rd in the slow race. (I'll eventually get a certificate and ribbon to prove it.)

For safety (?!) purposes, highwheel races were limited to heats of 4 or 5 people. Here's a the second lap from one of the races; notice that the folks were spreading out quite a bit.

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There were a lot of rare and one-of-a-kind (well, in one instance, a literal two-of-a-kind) bicycles at the meet. One of the more flabbergasting is the official US Army Columbia highwheel; the only one known to exist. I meant to get a picture of this the last time I saw it about 15 or 20 years ago; I finally got my chance today. Here's a closeup of the nameplate. You can see US Army stamped in the upper left of the plate.

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Special Friday pictures

I took some pictures with specific people in mind. Of coures, you can all look at them, but I think they'll mostly interest the people mentioned:

Mom and Pop: A sign from someone's collection:	(80 k)
Pureheart: It was hard getting a good picture of the entire bike; this is the best I could do. (One of only 2 of these bikes known to exist)	(56 k)
James: I don't know how old this is, but I bet you could be a Wheelmen if we could find you one like it...note that the rim is made of wood, and just look at that seat.	(52 k)

Saturday, July 27, 2002

Saturday was a busy day too, as it was the last full day of the meet (Sunday is just the "Give us your room key and get outta here" day).

We attempted and broke (subject to verification and certification) the world's record for a highwheel stack. No, not stacked like a pyramid. Stacked in this case means "lined up, on the bike, but not riding" The trick is being on your bike but not riding, as one usually falls over when your not moving forward. The way it works is two people get on their bikes and hold each other's handlebars. Then people on either side get on their bikes and hold the handlebar to the bike next to them, and so on, until everyone's up.

I was about half-way between the middle and the end. See the half of the photo where people are already on their bikes...? That's the middle of the line, and a lot of the highwheels are blocked from view.

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Later on Saturday some riders gave demos of trick riding. This one is the "rolling brace" since they're all moving. The hard part is that most of them have to ride with no hands. If someone's wheel starts to wobble and it hits the next bike, there's trouble.

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Sunday, July 28, 2002:

Today (Sunday) I packed up and headed on out. I got as far as Rawlins, WY (I'm taking I-80 back). The hills haven't been anywhere near as bad as those I crossed while taking 50. But two more spokes broke on the drive...I have to figure out what's breaking them, dang it. On the other hand, Jacques Graber is gearing up production on brand new spokes to the original specifications, so maybe I don't have to worry about it after all.

I came across my first traffic jam of the whole trip, on I-25, south of Fort Collins. Apparently there was an air show at an airport or Air Force Base, I'm not sure which. In any case, it seems that everyone in Colorado wanted to go. You see the offramp in the distance? I spent 20 minutes getting to it. Since I had so much time, I discovered it lead to I-34, which according to my map (that I had lots of time to study) would connect me to a shortcut to Laramie, bypassing Cheyenne. So I took the exit.

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Special For Pureheart: The I-34 cutoff took me to Loveland, CO. I had to pull over fast, then take this picture through the passenger window;thus the spots. I could probably find the area code for the place if you want to give them a call....

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Much later, I stopped at Fort Fred Steele. Actually, the Fort and nearly all the surrounding buildings burned down long after the Fort was no longer used, so it's more that I stopped at the site of the Former Fort Fred Steele. About only building still standing is the powder magazine. (The note on the door says that this is a state historic site, and anyone caught damaging it will be severly punished.) At least they could do what Sacramento did with Sutter's fort, which was to rebuild the darn thing from the ground up and pretend it's the real thing.

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Monday, July 29, 2002:

I got a good early start on Monday; I was out by 7 am heading east on 80. I made such good time that I was at my scheduled stopping place by about 1:30. It was then I decided that I could get home a day earlier by driving halfway to Tuesday's scheduled stopping place (Winnicummaca, NV was the scheduled spot), and going all the rest of the way home on Tuesday.

At a rest stop in Utah were these two signs. The one on the left is what you first see, and I thought it was amusing by itself. But when I headed back to the car, I saw the second sign, which was across the parking lot.

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Past the great Salt Lake, past the evaporation pools, you come across the Bonnieville Salt Flats. As far as you can see along the ground is salt, salt, salt. Imagine being a pioneer and coming across this place.

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When I got to the halfway point (Elko, NV), I had found a position where my feet didn't hurt, and so I decided to just go all the way home. I estimated I should be there between midnight and 2:00 am. Three cups of coffee, seven Jolt Colas later, and minimal rest and food stops later, I made it home at about 12:30 am Tuesday.

Thanks for reading!
Robert Howe

The End