Lookout Mountain-Mt. Vernon Loop

here's a birds-eye view of colorado school of mines' athletic fields on my way up.

hey kids. it's the beginning of a three day weekend. my goal? get in equal to or greater than 10 hours of cycling in three days. yeah i know. i run the risk of CNS burnout by going too fast at the beginning of the season but i figure since i start work again in july? what the hey-hey.
got in 2.5 hours today. it was a mellow ride. when i mean mellow, even though it was climbing a popular ride-lookout mountain-in golden, co (the home of coors beer-that's that factory looking thing in the background of topmost picture-and an unsuccessful congressional run by pete coors) my goal was to go so mellow that if i just decreased my watts by .00001, i'd fall over sideways. that was my goal. the weather was supposed to be in the fifties and it was truly glorious. still dressed as if it was winter: double jerseys, arm warmers, legs warmers, full-fingered mountain bike gloves, and a beanie under helmet but no booties. didn't really need neoprene booties today. here's my view(s) up the climb out of morrison into golden. it's near the world famous red rocks amphitheater where U2 played their sunday bloody sunday video in the rain.

i stuck to my goal because somebody on the climb up morrison glued up to my wheel and was content to suck it. usually since i possess a y-chromosome i'da upped the wattage to dish out some discomfort but no, i chilled and listened to a new cd i just ripped onto my iPod: the fiery furnaces' widow city. excellent cd. well, excellent if you're a deerhoof fan. in my generalization of music, it's like deerhoof except the gal actually sings. it has a start/stop nuanced tempo with a slightly distorted bass and drum line. pretty coo' though.
you know when you see a slight increase in the slope of the hill your currently climbing? so to prepare for it-instead of going out of the saddle and quasi-sprinting-you increase your rpms (seated) thereby also increasing the gyroscopic effect of your (pedaling) mass creating a kinetic condition where (it mentally seems like) your self-propelled increasing velocity punches you nicely over the increasing slope (i.e. the push pull of your pedaling is one with the universe)? he kinda faded during that section but caught up with me at the stop light. i didn't talk to him. i was in evil, dickhead roady with-the-iPod-earbud mode. i probably would've chatted but he didn't line up next to me, rather he lined up behind me at the light.
it was beautiful day. it was completely agreeable to my chilly-chill mode of climbing lookout. fast forward to the climb and the first notable pictures are of these para-gliders hooking up with convection currents, happily defying the law of gravity.

here's a solo guy. i can't even begin to imagine what sort of endorphin release's going on in this guy's mellon.

the more i climb the colder it gets and the closer the snow boundary gets to the road. as i approach these two riders doesn't it look cold (hell yes it was cold!)? this guy had exposed knees! silly mountain biker (oh yeah, i'm a mountain biker...). check out the snow near the shoulder and the lack of sunlight since we're in a northern part of the climb.

at 98% of the climb there's this real cool vista showing the road you climb up. also, there's this european dude on a trick skateboard with full leathers and a full-face helmet about to bomb the descent. he took off before i could get a proper picture but here he is in a skater's tuck.

here's a cropped picture of him up close, it's pretty pixelated though...

crazy no? well if you look at this picture, you can see the road i ascended on the bottom left as it snakes its way up lookout mountain.

after riding up to the mt. vernon country club, the descent was safe and dull except for an accident on the i-70 frontage road. it would've been pretty uncool to take a picture of an accident scene. the cars were pretty jacked up and an ambulance was on the scene. it was a great ride and hopefully i didn't use up too much of my glycogen stores for tomorrow's team ride in boulder. we're meeting at my boy chip's joint at 9:30 tomorrow.
when i got home i drank this lovely recommended brew from my local beer joint. it's from stone brewing company in san diego (escondido actually), ca and it's a trippel style, belgian ale. quite yummy. the name's vertical epic ale. incidentally, i'm not a big duvel fan. i highly recommend this brew though kids...

if you decided to try this concoction get the 08, not the 07. the 07 has this nutty spice that should never be an ingredient in any beer.