MIA

It's been a while since my last post but as you can see, I've been busy. We left last Wednesday and drove to Lincoln to pick up grampa. Then it was off to Steamboat CO for 4 days. We had a great time hanging out with family, fishing, hiking, and for me....riding.

Since my brother in law's condo was at the base of the mountain all I had to do is roll out in the morning and head up the mountain. Basically I'd climb for 1.5 - 2 hours and then descend for a 1/2 hour to the bottom. The elevation gain every day was just over 3000 ft starting at 6,900ft and hitting the peak at 10,372. After 4 days my brake rotors are blue from the heat and the pads are gone. Pretty cool that there was still some snow at 10,000ft when it was 80 degrees at the base. By far the best time I've had on the bike in Colorado in a long time. The Paragon was awesome both going up and descending. No doubt the 29er works going downhill in the bumps.
You may wonder why I only rode for 2-3 hours a day when the riding was so awesome. Well, the answer is right here. I had the family with me so I got to have my fun and then they needed to have theirs. We went to Dumont Lake on Rabbit Ears pass (10,000Ft) to fish. We managed to catch 4 good size trout. The boys were super excited as they got to reel in some good sized fish by themselves.
This is Dumont lake. It doesn't get much more relaxing than this. No planes,trains,automobiles, or anything else, just us and a few others staring at our poles and chatting, hoping to catch something.
As awesome as the vacation was the trip home was not without it's problems. The last time we went to Colorado we totaled the van the way home and a few of us were injured. This time it was just a flat tire just after crossing the Wyoming border. But what a pain, unload the back of the van, remove spare, install, then reload van leaving room for flat tire. Now drive 60 mph on interstate when everybody else was going 80 for 50 miles to a town with a tire store. First tire store discovers a cut sidewall but then discovers that they don't have a tire. But hey.....we're in luck, there is another tire shop in town that has a used tire that will get us home. Three hours since we discovered the flat, and 40$ later we're on our way. We arrive in Lincoln and move all of our stuff from Gramps van to our van and get ready to head for KC. We jump in, pull into the street.........and discover that the speedo and tach don't work. Everything else works so I figured I'll tag onto a semi and get to KC. While driving into Lincoln I noticed a storm building to the east and by time we hit Interstate 29 it's just east of us. I have never seen that much lightning at one time and it was there from Nebraska City until we stopped in St.Jo for gas. Guess what happened when I fired up the van after getting gas........the speedo and the tach started working! So the end of the story is that we finally arrived in KC at midnight.........we left Steamboat CO at 6am, you do the math. Of course I'd do it again next week if I could!