Stephen Skory

Not too shabby! Beyond this are sustained 10%+ grades on Sunshine Canyon. Ouch!

Here are some pictures I took on my mountain bike ride on Thursday, two days ago, from the Flatirons Vista Trails south of Boulder. The trails are decent single track that is just a bit more bumpy than I like (this kind of bumpy is not the same as technical, it’s just annoying). If I had a full-suspension bike I would probably not find the bumpiness so grating. Indeed, most of the riders I saw on the trails had a full-suspension bike.

The weather lately has been dry and mild, as the photos show. The autumn precipitation so far in Boulder is well below seasonal averages. In contrast, apparently the high mountains have been dumped with snow all fall. I guess I brought some San Diego with me to Boulder.

Image location (Green Arrow)

Today was my first official day of my postdoc position. Naturally, like most people would, I skipped out early to go ride my bike. It makes more sense once you know that for the last month and a half, I haven’t gone for a bike ride because I haven’t had health insurance. Not being insured made bike riding a risky proposition. As a result, I’ve also been walking to school and back which takes 40+ minutes each way, in comparison to the 10 minutes it takes on a bike. Today was my first opportunity to ride my bike, and it was sunny and relatively warm, so I wasn’t going to pass it up. In addition, I’ve basically been doing this job for over a month already, so the first-day impression came long ago.

Today’s ride was a bit of exploration, and very autumnal, as the photo above proves. If you look carefully, you can see some snow on the highest peaks. It was also my first opportunity to use my new Garmin Edge 705, which was a graduation present from various Ruggles. My legs definitely exhibited the effects of no bike riding – they got tired very quickly.

Finally, happy November!

Today I rode “Super Walker” which means that I did the Walker Ranch loop starting from town rather than the trail head. It turns out that the ride really is super, and there is a huge amount of climbing. Over 5000 feet of climbing in 30 miles.

I am going to brag again about how amazing cycling is here, and show some more photos of some of the ride today. You may click on them to enlarge them. Below is South Boulder Creek, which a couple parts of the loop crosses and parallels. The water was moving at a good clip!

A view looking North-West from one of the ridge lines the trail follows.

This is looking roughly East, down into the plains South of Boulder in front of the mountains.

Often times, the warning signs along trails are overly-cautious. It’s not that I think they don’t apply to me, but once I’ve ridden a trail a few times, I can judge for myself how technical the trail is, or how fast to take a corner. As long as there is no one else on the trail, and I can see far enough forward to be safe, I go my own speed. On this trail, however, I do not have experience, so I decided to heed the warning.

This is one case where the warning sign is correct. These are the stairs immediately after the sign that are significantly steeper, with bigger vertical step sizes, than most people find comfortable. It’s always tough to tell how steep things are in photos, but trust me, there is no chance I’ll ever ride these stairs. The stairs go down to the canyon floor which has been carved by South Boulder Creek, and is very steep and rocky (as can be seen) on both sides. But the scenery is fantastic, so the inconvenience of the stairs is worth it!

It has been nearly a month a half since my last post about leaving San Diego, and we’ve finally made it to Boulder! Ok, actually it didn’t take that long. It took us two days, with a stop overnight in Saint George, Utah. The long gap in posting is due to how busy I’ve been here in Boulder, which has been nearly entirely due to getting my thesis done, but also to a good deal of work getting the new apartment put together. Those things deserve their own posts, which may or may not happen.

What I would like to post here are some pictures I took on my bike ride yesterday. I am 99.7% done with the draft of my thesis which I’m sending to my advisors this weekend, so I figured I could take some time to ride my bike recreationally. This is a novelty for me recently. Come wintertime, I’m definitely going to miss the weather in San Diego, but right now, cycling here definitely beats San Diego. It takes less than ten minutes to get out of town onto roads like this (click to embiggen):

or this:

or this where it feels like I can see all the way to Kansas over the plains:

I just wanted to share. Hopefully, now that the bulk of the thesis is done, I can enjoy this area a bit before winter hits!